Yesterday I drove from Alice Springs to the Kings Canyon Resort. I enjoyed Alice Springs. It had a unique beauty, being a very westernized city, in the middle of rocks, in the middle of nowhere. I got lost and ended up driving around the suburban areas, and discovered that a few houses had large boulders in their front yard or the nature strip out the front. I presumed that it was simply because the rocks were to big to move.
The Caravan park that I stayed in had the best check in lady, so far. She was a lovely grandmotherly lady, who asked where I'd been, where I was going, and how impressed she was I was doing it all by myself. I was able to top up my supplies the following morning in Alice Springs, after a very unexpected splattering of dawn rain!
The drive from Alice Springs to the Kings Canyon resort was absolutely horrible. I like to call it "the devil road". 150km of high winds and horrible dirt corrugation, and I'm somewhat experienced in off road driving. I had a couple of goes at trying to pick up speed on the dirt, which ended in my failing miserably. The entire plastic dash on my van would shake and wobble like you wouldn't believe. My hands where so sore by the time I reached the end, which was a good couple of hours as I could only go up to 20kph for most of the corrugation.
There was a beautiful look out and free camp spot just before the dirt road. I stopped for the look, and would have considered staying there the night if there were other people around. There were stunningly red hills, that were part of a larger mountain which had the appearance of a set of rolling waves.
According to my list of "Big Things" the Big Echidna was only a short detour off the road to Kings Canyon. So off I went, down another dirt corrugation road. I came across a herd of donkeys, and a water tank covered in graffiti, with the sides blown out like windows. When I got to the end of the road, it was a tiny aboriginal village with only one street. I slowly drove through, looking for the Big Echidna, and feeling slightly like a I look crazy. White girl by herself, in a hippy van covered in yellow spots. I didn't want to cement any of the stares I was getting, by asking if there was a giant echidna statue near by.
When I finally arrived at the Kings Canyon Resort, I booked in to a powered site(which was all they had). As I found my site, there was already someone in it! It was almost dark by this point, and the car was over to the one side, so I thought that maybe I was mistaken and there are supposed to be two cars per site. However, my power outlet was being used so I realized that it must have been a reception stuff up.
I was agitated and exhausted from the dirt road, and now slightly pissed off that they mucked it up this booking. After decided that I couldn't be stuffed trying to sort it out, and there was no one in the car next door, I just turned in for an early night. I stayed in bed until the people next door had unplugged and left, and I was able to have a few hours of charging my necessities - like my toothbrush.
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