Final Outback Day

After a good night's sleep under the stars, Erin and I headed out to try and watch the sunrise. Unfortunately the flies were crazy and we forgot our fly masks, so we didn't last very long.

We got on the road reasonably early again and headed to Kings Canyon. It's sometimes referred to as the Grand Canyon of Australia. It was an amazing place, but from a size point of view, it's very much smaller than the Grand Canyon. We went on a 4 hour walk around, in, and over the Canyon. There is generally a pool of fresh water that you can swim in, but because they haven't had much new rain in the recent months, the water wasn't the most sanitary. Tony described it as "skanky".

King and Queen of the Mountain

Our friends from Japan. They didn't speak much English but did root for the Red Sox!

On the way home we drove most of the 4 hour trip on a dirt road through the barrenness which is the outback. We ran into a bunch of wild camels, saw a pretty big lizard crossing the road, and saw a famous singing dingo. Dinky the Dingo is world famous, is in the new trivial pursuit and we saw him in person.

We made it back to Alice Springs and unfortunately our tour has come to an end, but not without 1 last night out with the tour group. We decided to meet up at 8:00pm for dinner, drinks, and what turned out to be a bunch of dancing and mingling with locals. We spent our night at Bojangles and around 2am we were all kicked out of the bar, said our goodbyes, and parted ways. Overall a great tour!

On another note: Here in Auckland today, we had some visitors from the US. My cousin Jo-Ann and her husband Tom were in Auckland for a couple of days at the end of their 4 week trip around New Zealand before flying back to Seattle. We had a great dinner at Sails, enjoyed looking at the ships, and some great conversation.