Saturday, 11 August 2012

Day 13 riding

There was lots of road kill this early morning.  Well, it was early for us - on the road by 8.  That’s pretty good considering we had to break camp.  Anyway, there not as much road kill as a few days back when it was every quarter to half mile.  But these are way messier.  Ick!   Not pretty.  Plus, it’s a serious reminder that we need to finish our riding day well before dusk.  As our new pal, Al, warned, “The first kangaroo may startle you.  The second one may kill you!”  We’re going to have to keep getting up and on the road if we’re going to make up some time / miles.  As it stands, it looks like we have only 1 day leeway.  That means all the service stops will need to have needed spare parts & supplies on hand.  We can’t afford to wait a day to ship something in.  Fingers crossed all goes without a hitch.  (By now you all know this didn’t quite work out.  Good thing our calculations were off a bit.)

We stopped for breakfast in Charters Towers.  It’s a quaint small town with a bustling main street.

These boys were having a bake sale to raise funds for an upcoming trip to Canberra.  Also in the photo are their teacher and her assistant.

We’ve begun to encounter the dreaded “road train.”  It’s a tractor / trailer combination similar to what I’ve seen in the US but there are 3 or more trailers.  Road signs say they are 53.5 meters (a little over 175 feet) long.  They seem a lot longer than that to me.  At least they’re clearly marked (sort of).

We stopped at Robert Gray Memorial Park for a picnic lunch.  It’s a nice little park along the Flinders River.  The stones have plaques engraved with names of locals who are remembered by family members or by the community in general.

There were several stops for road construction.  Ian and Bunny walked around and met some of our fellow travelers.

We decided to spend the night at a caravan park because all the hotels were very expensive.  One last stop before that was the Kronosaurus Korner.  It was closed ;(  There were some good photo opportunities outside, though.

Scooters being stalked

Can you spot Bunny?

The woman at the registration desk in the caravan park in Richmond said it was supposed to get cold overnight.  A budget bunk room (instead of a tent site) was a splurge by Ian.  I, with my heated jacket, would have been ok with a tent site. :?  .  It was clean and tidy and I had a blanket with a Tasmanian devil – the Warner Brothers cartoon character, not the poisonous kind.

There were two options for dinner and we opted for the Federal Palace Hotel.  I have to say, it was the worst dinner out I’ve had in a long, long time.  Ah, well…at least the company was good.

It’s 10 and I’d better get some sleep.  It’ll be another early day tomorrow.