On the road again....

It was really weird to get back to our caravan in Alice Springs after being in a real house, although probably too small for 2 grandparents and the four of us, especially as our kids are b.u.s.y. and n.o.i.s.y. I think everyone had mixed feelings, although we were all happy to be back in the van and get ready to hit the road north again. Tilda and I had both enjoyed our time with friends so much it reminded us how much we miss them while on the road, but I know all of the adventures that await and I am really excited at the opportunity to see Kakadu, Katherine, Darwin and WA. Tilda not so much, although she is learning to look for the fun in things even if she is sad to be away from home and friends again.

The weather has been wonderful since we got back... blue skies, sun and shorts and t-shirt weather. It is actually taking a bit of adjusting to being so hot! Sorry my friends back home....

We had a great overnight free camp on our first night out of Alice Springs. It's at a WWII memorial site north of Barrow Creek. It's a large area, 1km off the highway and there were only 3 other vans there so it was quiet and peaceful and beautiful. It's the first free camp we've done since March where it didn't rain (yippee!!) so that was a pleasant experience for us.

 Our view from our caravan

 The creek near our van. This is what most creeks look like between Alice and Tennant Creek

An artistic attempt to capture the red soil and the blue sky, complete with moon

 Sunset (the red was much deeper than this photo shows)

We stopped at Wycliffe Wells because 1 - it has the cheapest fuel in this neck of the woods and 2 - they've set themselves up as the UFO Centre of Australia. There is all sorts of UFO paraphernalia, complete with a drain in the floor with an alien looking up through it, newspaper articles of UFO and alien sitings and of course, UFO souveniers. I figure good luck to them for having a go at making a good tourist attraction (other than cheap fuel) so of course we had to stop and buy some things. The kids loved it, especially Rory, although at bed time he didn't want to wear his astronaut PJs because he doesn't want to be an astronaut and see and alien, funny boy!

We also stopped at the Devils Marbles. These are a really amazing geological formation. I can't believe how round so many of the rocks are, or how they just perch atop each other, although they obviously fall over as there are quite a lot lying on the ground. I always thought it was just a couple of lots of one or two round rocks balanced on top of each other so I was quite surprised at how extensive the rock field extends. You can camp there for a small fee and I can see why people would, as they would look incredible at sunset when the rocks became a much deeper red, but it wasn't that far from our overnighter and we didn't want to stay.

 

One of the things that has surprised me is how little wildlife we have seen since we hit the NT. Today we saw quite a bit of cow roadkill but we really haven't seen native animals, as road kill or in the wild, except for a dingo on our way to Uluru, a mangy dingo crossbreed at Kings Canyon caravan park and a wallaby in Kings Canyon. There may have been one other roo siting but that would be it. There are a lot of wedgetail eagles and other birds of prey circling near the roads. I honestly thought we would have seen more.