DAY 6 - FINALLY BACK ON THE ROAD AGAIN... EMERALD TO JERICHO

After a three day delay in Emerald, we are on the road again...
We had three wonderful days with our good friends the Brays,  I really think it was a God thing, because on Wednesday, the fridge just started working again.  Even the plumber could not understand it.  Karen B said it was because we needed to have a few more days with her,  also Steve's Dad suffered a minor stroke, so it was good to stay in one spot until we knew that he was stable and OK. 
I also got to visit a chiropractor in Emerald who was finally able to adjust my back so that there was no more nerve pinching, so we took off yesterday and headed to Jericho.

It also gave our good friends John and Barb a chance to catch up to us, as they were unable to leave the Sunshine Coast until today, as John had to have some urgent work done on his teeth...  They were packed the night before all hitched and ready to roll the moment John got out of the dentist,  This means that instead of 5 or 6 days behind us, they were no only going to be a day or two behind us.

We pulled out of Emerald around 12.15pm after dropping into the Neighbourhood Centre to say goodbye to Karen.  Unfortunately we missed her as she was out with a client....

We were only aiming to get as far as Jericho tonight so it was not a big trip.  It was only a little over a couple of hundred kms...

We had heard about the famous Snow's Pies from the Alpha Bakery, so headed to Alpha where we stopped for lunch and had a pie from the Bakery.  Apparently Snow has won awards for his pies and they didn't disappoint us....

Alpha's famous bakery

Some of the many mural's around the town..

Advertising Snow's Bakery

My meat pie for lunch...

Quite a tasty lunch...

 Before leaving Alpha, we all headed for the rest rooms to make a pit stop and on our way their we came across this monument

 We probably spent a good hour or more iAlpha before getting back in the cars and heading for Jericho.  One of my Scrap of Faith Friends has just been through Jericho and she raved about a free camp site on the banks of the Jordan River and since we only wanted to stop on our way through, we decided to free camp there for the night also.  It was a great spot...
We had been through Jericho two years ago but obviously did not explore it otherwise we would not have missed the little gems here...

Jericho is situated on the Jordan River in Qld, and has a monument of Joshua blowing the trumpet to bring down the walls of Jericho.

 For such a small town town they really had quite a few tourist attractions to check out. 
Not far from "Joshua the Trumpeter" was the "Crystal Trumpeters".  This was a bi-centennial project that was sponsored for the town.

Crystal Trumpeters

 Across the road from the "Crystal Trumpeters", we spotted the  Jericho Drive In Theatre.  The Jericho Drive-In opened on 26th July 1969 with Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”. It has a capacity for 34 cars and seats for 32 walk-in patrons. It still operates once a month on a Saturday. The Jericho Drive-in is the smallest drive-in in Australia and possibly the world!?

Seating for the walk in Patrons

The large projector

The drive in theatre

 The town is very small and you can easily see it all in an afternoon.
Our next job was to find the free camping ground on the Jordan River.  It didn't take us too long to find it as it was well signed.  You would have been amazed at the number of folk camping there.  We counted 30 0r more vans within our eyesight and that was including the vans that were around the river further down.  The amenities were immaculate, not that there was much there.  Only one male and female toilet but still considering the large number of people camping there they were well looked after...  There was also a play area,  lots of picnic tables and even just seats to sit on by the river.  Lots of the campsites had their own fire pits and the council even supplied firewood for you.  We could have easily stayed another night.  The only drawback was that there was very little grass, mostly dust,  but it was very peaceful and quite serene....

It didn't take us too long to set up the vans... We were not unhitching as we were leaving again first thing in the morning...
We were all hanging out for a cuppa so set up our tables and chairs for Happy Hour... (We are always happy)

Totally relaxed and chilled out

 After our cuppa we decided to go for a little walk to explore the area.. Ian and Kathy left slightly before us as we wanted to ring Steve's mum to find out how his dad was. 
This is such a tranquil and peaceful spot

 Our set up for the night...

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 It has been a beautiful day.  Quite hot for this time of year, in fact so hot that we were back in summer clothes and ran the fan all night.
We enjoyed a light dinner with Ian and Kathy and then had a game of Play Prop (the game that Pete and Maria had given me for Mother's Day)  Lots of fun.  We retired around 9.30pm and just as we were about to climb into bed we had some rain spits on our roof.  Ok up we got as our chairs needed to go under cover as we could not afford to have them wet....  They just got locked in the car...
Good thing we did as it rained for most of the night.  Not really heavy rain but it would have been enough to totally saturate the chairs.
It was an early night for us.... The rest of the park seemed to retire around 8pm (still can't get over that) and it was around 10.30pm when we finally turned out the light...