DAY 28 & 29 – BACK TO ALICE SPRINGS

  A seemingly uneventful day today, as all of the morning was spent in retracing our tracks back to Alice Springs.  We left Mt Ebenezer around 8.30am and drove the half hour back to Erldunda where we all fuelled up for our journey back to Alice.  The roadhouse was nowhere near as busy this morning as it was when we stopped a week ago on our way out to Uluru.  Maybe it was because we were there earlier today or maybe it was because the NT school holidays had finished.  Anyway, we were able to fuel up straight away and then we spent a little time checking out the emu’s at the emu farm next door. 

Old man Emu

Even the emu's don't seem to like the paddy melons

These emu’s were much darker in colour to the ones we are used to seeing in Queensland.    They seemed pretty friendly and you were able to pick up a bag of emu food from the roadhouse to feed the emus, and quite a few of the tourists were feeding them.  This gave us the opportunity to take a couple of good photos of them.

The rest of the trip back was quite uneventful, but we did enjoy the scenery.  There were some pretty impressive stoney ground and rocky hills and several interesting dry creek beds.  We arrived back in Alice Springs around 12 noon, where we were booked into the Wintersun Caravan Park again.  This is the same park we had stayed at previously.  Once again we got great drive through sites, even better than our last ones, as there are no galah’s in the trees above us pooing all over our van and car.  It seems a lot quieter down this end of the park also, and we almost have the end section to ourselves.  

The park is surrounded by these security razor wire fences... Almost like being in a prison.

All set up for a few days stay

After setting up, we enjoyed a hot cuppa, we had missed our one this morning as we travelled straight through without stopping for morning tea, and we had some leftovers for lunch.  Kathy put in a load of washing whilst I uploaded some of our photos to Facebook, 

Washing day at the Alice

and then Ian, Kathy, Barb and I took off to do  a grocery shop, whilst Steve went to collect a vinyl bag he had ordered a week ago to store our flat pack BBQ.  John stayed home and cooked dinner for everyone including a caramel mudcake which we devoured with custard for desert.  We are not starving on this trip that is for sure…….

Tomorrow we plan on having a pretty chilled out day, to get a few jobs done that have started to mount up…. Van cleaning, washing, repairs, shopping, and maybe we might get some time to do a little more crocheting for our Termite Mound dressing…

Crocheting for our termite mound.  Pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

It has been really lovely having a down day today.  No going out, just catching up on everything.  so much so that we were inspired to cook, bake, clean, wash, mop, the lot and we all felt very content and at peace with the world.  Probably helped that we have no real idea of what is going on in the world either, as we haven't watched any TV, or read any papers, so life has been good.   

We decided that some home made bread, and Pea and Ham soup might be nice for dinner this evening.  

Kathy cooked the soup, John made the break, and I baked a date loaf for desert, and then baked a cake for morning tea for tomorrow for when we were going to go explore the East MacDonald Ranges.

My date loaf for desert

Freshly baked bread for dinner

Our dinner - we are living like Kings and Queens on the road...

Ian and Kathy enjoying dinner

Our evening meals are always held together

fresh bakes bread straight from the oven and still warm...

A satisfying and filling dinner..

Being back in Alice we are heading in doors early again as the temperatures seem to drop dramatically after about 7.30pm, and it is much too cold to sit outside for too long.  I am still at a loss to understand why the evenings, and mornings are so much colder in Alice then they were out at Kings Canyon and Uluru, considering both of these places are further south and west than Alice Springs.  I can only imagine that the cold air gets trapped between the ranges because the temps at Alice have ranged from -5 degrees to about 1 degree when we wake up of a morning....  Thank goodness for our warm cosy vans...