The Red Centre - King's Canyon

The next day started out slow, but somehow we packed up and made it to the Mount Connor lookout for breakfast a little over an hour away.  The lookout was okay, but the exciting thing was the dead camel we saw on the side of the road.  We were on the lookout for a wild one and keeping our fingers crossed that it would be alive.

After a long, uneventful drive, we managed to arrive at King's Canyon at 11am, which was unfortunately the peak heat of the day.  You'd think that we would have figured that out by now, but because of that we were unable to do the supposedly spectacular, 4 hour ridge walk around the canyon.  It was 34 degrees when we arrived, and we definitely didn't have enough water carrying capacity to do a 4 hour hike in the heat.  Instead, we did the lazy tourist thing and booked a hotel room at the resort and I bird watched from our balcony.  Later on we went to the campground to cook our salmon and veggies as a delicious "pre-dinner".

We were still hungry after that and could hardly wait until 6:00 when the restaurant opened for dinner.  As usual, we were the first and only ones in the restaurant for awhile.  Our second dinner was delicious (scallop salad and stuffed chicken), and we were early to bed again.  One night of partying was enough for us!

After a good night seep we packed up so we could do our short King's Creek walk by 9am.  Unfortunately, when we got to the trail I realized I had left my camera at the restaurant the night before, so we had to go back to get it.  UsuallyI would think that all signs were telling us not to do the hike, but we saw a wild dingo on our way to the hike for the third time so it was all worth it!

The hike was really easy and we regretted not planning more time for the longer ridge walk, but oh well.  The gorge was beautiful and I spent some time looking for a Mistletoe Bird without any luck.

I was "off the path" trying to track down the bird in the mistletoe bush with no luck.  Ryan found it hilarious.

Back in the car, we started our very long drive to Alice Springs.  The only noteworthy part of the drive was the wild camel we saw!  You've gotta love that just like in Canada the best way to spot wildlife is by watching for other cars that are pulled over on the side of the road!

We didn't get to Alice until 4pm that afternoon, so we checked right into our beautiful hotel, The Chiefly Alice Springs Resort.  It was actually a lot like a resort with palm trees and a pool with a (closed) swim-up bar, so we decided to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant.  Man, it was good!  We had braised rabbit and pumpkin (aka, squash) soup for our appetizers, then a kangaroo fillet and macadamia crusted barramundi (fish) on ratatouille, and we shared panacotta and ice cream for dessert.  My mouth is watering again just thinking about it!

After dinner we re-entered our food comas, so I fell asleep during whatever movie Ryan was watching.

The Red Centre - Ayers Rock and The Olgas

Last week Ryan and I hopped on a plane and headed to the Alice Springs area for 6 nights. 

Point "A" on the map is Ayers Rock.

My friend Leanna (who was on my synchro team in Waterloo) lives there with her boyfriend, and I wanted to visit her before she leaves in a few months.  We spent the first 3 days driving in the desert seeing Ayers Rock and King's Canyon, then Leanna took us around Alice Springs for the last few days.

Our flight to Alice was about an hour late, so we arrived around 1pm.  We got groceries and bought a cooler as quickly as we could, and then left town.  Unfortunately the map of Alice that we were using had North pointing down on the map, so my navigator (I won't mention any names) took us the wrong direction out of town.  Luckily there was a sign telling us that Darwin was 1600km away, so we quickly got the hint.  By about 3pm we were finally heading out of Alice Springs in the correct direction - towards Uluru/Ayers Rock.

Despite the speed limit of 130km/h, we still managed to get further delayed by giving a boost to some French girls stranded in an old car at a gas station.  The highlight of the long drive, though, was some graffiti on the back of a road sign that said "hello banana nose".  Seriously, it kept us entertained for days!  As it got dark Ryan took over the driving, and instead of watching out for the usual kangaroos, we really had to watch out for the cows on the road.    460km later we finally arrived at our campsite and set up our tent in the dark under the watchful eyes of dozens of rabbits.

The next morning we slept in until 7am (delightful, considering how early we get up at work), and had a delicious barbeque breakfast of lamb sausages and grilled veggies.  We also made our picnic lunch and got to the national park by 10am.  Ayers Rock is massive, and it of course dominates the landscape in the flat desert.  The morning light was perfect, and we enjoyed a few photo stops as we approached it.  It's obviously much harder to photograph from up close.

We were surprised how lush the landscape was in the area.  In many places along the drive there were actually large trees and shrubs, which didn't seem right.  As it turns out, the harshest Outback is actually near where I work.  Go figure!

After a quick stop at the visitor centre we did the short walk to the watering hole on the edge of Ayers Rock, since to walk around the entire thing would have taken 4.5 hours in the 36 degree heat.  The closer you get to the rock, the more massive it seems and the more you can see that it just goes straight up.  I honestly don't know how people climb it (even though you're not supposed to since it's a sacred site).

The heart-shaped erosion in the side of the rock entertained us for awhile, but none of the crazy pictures of me blowing "heart kisses" turned out very well.

Next we drove a little ways down the road to see The Olgas.

Ryan was surprised that they weren't sandstone like Ayers Rock, so then I learned about clasts, brecchia, and the matrix (not the movie kind).  We took another short walk in between two of the cones through a gorge, which was very hard to photograph but also very cool.  The mounds were going straight up on either side of us, and we were in a lush passageway between them.

We managed to time our walk in between two tour busses, so we had a peaceful moment to do some admiring and bird watching without a crowd.

I'm going to do a separate post later about the critters we saw on the trip, but this was a major highlight so I'm going to add it here.  We saw a Thorny Devil lizard!  It was just hanging out on the road, so of course I pulled over and we chased it off of the road so we could take pictures.  He's super hard to see, which obviously means he's doing his job.  He also wasn't very big either - only about the size of your hand.

We had a bit of spare time that afternoon, so we briefly checked out the facilities that the resort had to offer, including a supermarket, shopping plaza, and camels.  Oh, didn't I mention that Australia has one of the last remaining wild camel populations in the world?  No?  Supposedly the camels here are of such pure lineage that we export them overseas to the Middle East!  Crazy, right?!  Anyways, I got it in my head that I wanted to ride one, but unfortunately all of the camels were out on a long trek so I couldn't.  Instead we got to play with the babies that were left behind!

I think Ryan really misses his dog, because this camel got a whole lotta love from him.  Just as we were leaving, all of the riding camels came back so we got to hang out with them for a bit too.

After playing with the camels, we went back to the campsite to wash up for our Sounds of Silence dinner under the stars.  To be continued!