July 2, 2012 - King's Canyon to Alice Springs

We left King's Creek Station at 9am - it was bright & sunny, but very cold.  We had to travel along the Lasseter & Stuart Highways, the latter of which goes all the way to Darwin.We hoped that we would soon have mobile phone contact again.

We passed a shorter dirt road to Alice Springs but weren't game to try it.  Didn't fancy being "all shook up"!  We stopped for coffee at the Lasseter H'way junction & met a couple with an "off-road" caravan.  They'd travelled 100km along the dirt road & had found chaos inside their caravan when they stopped - the contents of the fridge were all over the floor, units had come away from the walls, the glass microwave plate had shot out, etc., etc!  We were wise to avoid it.

Lasseter Highway Junction

We came across some road works & the red dust was unbelievable!  Quite a lot has found its way into our van & my feet will probably be red for ever!

We joined the Stuart H'way at Erldunda, where we refuelled.  It was a very busy filling station as cars, coaches & caravanners queued to fill up for their long journeys ahead.  When we moved on to the highway, the speed limit changed to 130kph & we "shuddered" as huge trucks thundered past us!

We found a pleasant rest area for lunch, then set off again through a range of sharp-ridged hills.  Throughout the rest of the journey, the terrain alternated between hilly areas & vast, wide plains.  The sun shone relentlessly & we were grateful for the extensions on our windscreen shades.




Lunch stop

We saw markers, at intervals, to show the depth of floods in the wet season - hard to imagine, since all the river beds we'd seen, were dry!  At Stuart's Well, there was a camel farm - very suitable animals for this environment.
When we finally arrived at the Winter Sun Campsite, in Alice, Judy was cooking a roast pork dinner for us - magic!