The road to Anniversary

After six lovely nights in Alice Springs, it was time to pack up this morning and head to Ayers Rock. or more commonly known as Uluru.

While our campground, 'Wanngardi' in Alice Springs didn't look like much, we really hit jackpot. This seems to be the place that most tourists overlook, preferring the parks with all of the bells and whistles. We really enjoyed pitching our tent under the trees, watching the stars and becoming familiar with the local bird life. We were out of town so it was much quieter and a nice little spot to relax after a day doing the tourist thing in town. We met some really great people during our stay there, in particular, Tom and his wife Lynne.
They have been on the road for 20 years touring, as Tom is a Country music artist. Before saying our goodbyes we were able to purchase a couple of Tom's CD's, his latest, Behind the Boundry Gate and another from his collection, Spread your wings.  We look forward to listening to these over this trip and back at home.

See Tom's website http://www.tommaxwell.com.au/index.html

We packed up and hit the road.

I did actually squeal like a little girl, when we had to stop on the road to let some cows pass! It just made my day. They were just casually wandering across the road looking for greener grass, meanwhile I was taking their photo and grinning from ear to ear.

We made a couple of short stops along the way to stretch our legs or change driver, including the dry Finke river.

The most notable was our lunch stop at Curtin Springs roadhouse. We have come to enjoy the roadhouses. The owners are friendly and you can usually find some humorous things on the walls. Shannon noticed an interesting sign that read "Attitude effects price". We went in not expecting much in terms of food, but were very pleasantly surprised. Today we quite possibly had the best hamburger and steak sandwich that we have ever had. We sat outside under the shade of an old Bough house, which literally housed many people years ago and is now used as an outside gazebo in the dining area. The food arrived and it was delicious. We weren't sure if it was just because we were hungry, but later realised no, it really was that good!

We arrived in Yulara a couple of hours later and joined the queue at the campground to check-in. After the peace and quite of our bush camp, this place feels like Federation Square in Melbourne. There are literally hundreds of people staying here because it's the only place you can camp. There are tents like us, but also campervans, caravans and motorhomes. There are couples, families and massive school groups. We're hoping they have a noise curfew in place or look out! We caught our first glimpse of Uluru itself on the way in and were in awe, so once we had set up on our little patch of lawn, we went for a drive to take a closer look. Just its size is incredible. I had this image in my mind of what I thought it would look like and certainly hadn't imagined it being so enormous. It's a brilliant red colour, but it also seems to change in different light. We are going to walk around its base in a couple of days time at sunrise, so will get an up close look at it then.

It's our wedding anniversary today - rissoles and salad were on the menu tonight. (apparently, rissoles are now known as sliders) but we will celebrate properly when we enjoy the 'Field of Lights dinner' in a few days time.

Blog time!