Monday, July 31, 2017

DAY 25 – HEADING TO KING’S CANYON.



It is hard to believe that our time out at Uluru is over and we are leaving.  We have been dreaming about our visit to this beautiful spot for a couple of years now.  We are still at times pinching ourselves to check that we are really living the dream.  The dream we spent about three years planning and dreaming about and now we are three weeks into it.  It almost feels like every day is Sunday.
We wanted to be away by 8.15am as we had almost 300kms to drive today.  We did well; I think we were driving out of the camping ground at 8.16am.  John needed to refuel at Curtain Springs so that was our first stop today.  Curtin Springs is about 110 kms from Yarala and as we had traveled this road before, I decided to catch up on our travel log, as I really hadn’t written anything in it since we had left Alice Springs..
It didn’t take us too long to get to Curtin Springs.  Whilst John fueled up, the girls went for a walk with our cameras.  I really hadn’t any photos when we camped here as I had a backlog of photos to sort from when we were in Alice Springs.  Today I took photos as we really enjoyed our stay here and it will be nice to remember it by them.  I did forget though to go into the shower and take a photo of the showerhead… It was a classic.
Free camping area at Curtin Springs - great spot to camp.
Our vans all lined up.
We left Curtain Springs and headed back along the Lasseter Highway for about another 50kms until we got to the turn off for Kings Canyon.  What a spectacular sight we witnessed with the most amazing cloud formations.   


They were so good that I took a few photos of them.  It was just like a trail right across an otherwise very blue sky.  Once we hit the turnoff the road here narrowed somewhat even though the speed limit on it was 110km per hour…. Kings Canyon was another 169kms from this turn off.  After about traveling 60 odd kms we stopped at a rest area for morning tea. 
Major Mitchell Cockatoo
Morning tea at Salt Creek Rest Area
 The highlight of stopping here was seeing all the Major Mitchell Cockatoos in the trees.  I have seen them at Zoos and in cages before but it was great to see them out in the wild.  Of course, we all took photos. 

  From here, we only had just over 100kms to go until we got to the Kings Canyon Resort.  What a great camping ground this is.  Same price as Yalara but so much nicer, lots of beautiful gum trees around, so much shade, no red sand, and the amenities and laundry are just across the road from us.  Nice, spacious, and very clean.  The park is quite peaceful also with not a lot of people coming and going…


One of the first things I did when we got set up was to vacuum and mop my floors.  They were disgusting from all the red sand at Yalara, but I figured it wasn’t worth doing them there because the sand was everywhere and no sooner would you clean them, and they would be filthy again…

It felt good to have them looking clean again, and then it was straight over with Barb to throw a load of washing into the machine.  Oh to have some clean clothes again.  We all had a bit of a camp, Steve actually managed a sleep and then around three thirty we took off to go out to Kings Canyon and do the smaller of the two walks.  We did the Kings Creek Walk, a very pleasant walk, much nicer than the walk we had done the previous day at the Olga’s.   
Starting out on the Kings Creek Walk
 This time there was a pretty decent path to walk along and even the rocks in the creek were a lot more stable than the rocks at Kata Tjuta.  Also for most of this walk we were in the shade.  I actually enjoyed the walk.  It took us about an hour to do as it was only about 2 kms.  There were lots of signs on Aboriginal culture along the way, that we were able to read.  It is an amazing canyon with straight sheer rock faces.  The others plan to do the Kings Canyon Rim Walk in the morning.  I plan to have a day off and catch up on a few things.  I don’t think the 6km walk up and down rock stairs and rock paths would do my back and hip any good, so I am going to give this one a miss.  

We headed back to the caravan around 5pm just in time to get a few vegetables ready for dinner, before going for a walk to the lookout about a kilometre from the camping grounds to watch the sun set over the Petermann Ranges. 


It was a really lovely sunset with rich colours of apricot, violet, peach and pink all around the ranges.  Photos just do not do it justice.  The camping ground have an outdoor bar set up at the lookout where they sell drinks if you present them with your little slip of white paper.  We didn’t worry about getting one, as even cans of softdrink were $5.50 and a can of beer was $8.50.


After sunset we headed back to the vans and all shared dinner together over at Ian and Kathy’s.  Shepherd’s Pie was on the menu tonight and Barb and John supplied an Orange Cake that they had cooked in the Weber.  One thing about our camping holiday is that we are all eating well.  Probably too well.  I think we were all pleased to have a night in tonight as we have had a few nights of going out when we were out at Uluru.   The others also had an early start in the morning as they wanted to be up at sunrise so that they could be out at Kings Canyon by 8am to do the Rim Walk before it got too hot.  The other good thing about this holiday is that we are actually managing to have earlier nights and we are sleeping well. 

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