Spring is

Coming to Melbourne

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tues Sept 3-Wed Sept 4.…..In search of the 2,000,000th cache in A Town Called Alice

Tuesday we said goodbye to our little house in Reservoir, everything locked up and ready for Joan to come home..  The taxi picked us up at 6:30 for our 8:40 flight, taking all of our luggage.  This time security was a breeze, no batteries needing taping, no tweezers not getting through the x-ray machine, no necklaces sending off beeps…..we only had trouble having the self serve (not our choice) machine not accepting Lori’s  luggage and me having to take all my batteries (not taped) out of my luggage and putting them in my carry-on!!! Airports and airlines!!! Everyone different, accepting different things, security different……expect the unexpected!!!!!

Our flight to Alice Springs was smooth, the view was clear all across the country.  We landed in a little after 11am to summer weather!  30 degrees and lots of little flies.  The airport is really cute and obviously updated.  The shuttle took us to Toddy’s Backpackers (for free, we just had to pay $12 for our return to the airport on Sunday).   Toddy’s is a hostel but has motel rooms too, small but clean.  We chose this because the tour we are taking to Uluru is through this hostel.  We got settled and relaxed for a while in the wifi area until about 4 when it was cooler then we walked down to the Reptile Centre to get our first Northern Territory cache.  It is the closest one to Toddy’s and is called  Snakes Alive! (not my favourite things).  It was an easy cache to find and as we were leaving one of the  employees came out to ask if we found it, then tried to talk us into coming to visit to get over my fear of snakes!!

Alice Springs airport

Todd Mall

We continued on towards town.  I have always wanted to visit Alice Springs. I think I wanted to come here after I read a book many years ago call A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute. I didn’t have any misconceptions about it, I knew it was a small outback town much like a prairie town but rough and in the middle of nowhere. It is larger than what I thought it would be.  The town centre is very pretty , with a pretty mall, a walking only street not shopping centre although couple of small ones of those too.   The area is very dry (it is desert) but there are still the smells of eucalyptus, jasmine and honeysuckle in the air.   Our hostel is about 1.5 km from downtown., so had a nice walk although still warm.  We found another cache at the Todd Mall.  Then since we hadn’t had lunch and now it was about 5:30 we stopped for dinner at Sporties and had delicious large salads.  Saw a store I want to come back to tomorrow and stopped off to get some fruit, lunch food for tomorrow and snacks and water for our camping trip starting Thurs. 

By the time we started walking towards  Toddy’s it was dark and we walked  on the opposite side of the street  and ended up walking about a kilometre past, so when we figured that out  we had to walk back….water and groceries!!! Duh so much for looking at the GPS in the dark!!!  We finally got back about 8, got caught up with the blog and emailing and headed to bed.

Can you guess what kind of store this was in front of?

Wednesday
This was a wonderful day!!!  Even though it was the 4th here, we knew it was the 3rd back home, and school was starting up.......WITHOUT US!!!!!  Retirement is wonderful.  We got a picture on the email of Carter starting his first day of Kindergarten; so nice to see.

We were up pretty early, as we had a mission to accomplish.  This was the day we were to visit the rugged terrain outside of town and claim a find on the 2,000,000th placed geocache.  It's been pretty hyped up, and when it came out earlier in the year, Pam knew this was something she had to do since she was planning on being here anyway.  We have been "watching" it since it came out.  We had an early "hostel" breakfast and decided to get a taxi to take us out to the lookout where we needed to start.  I'm pretty sure the driver thought we were absolutely crazy, but away we went.  It was not a far distance to the cache, but it was down a gully and up the other side.  Even though it was only about 8 a.m., it was plenty hot for us to scale the red rocks.  Lots of scrub was on the ground, with little burrs to make things challenging.  And the flies....oh my god, the flies....everywhere.  We couldn't seem to see a path, so we just picked a line and went for it.  Once we were at the top of the ridge and we came around the corner, we could see over Alice Springs.... and a big kangaroo hopped by!  A real Aussie moment, for sure.  We signed the log and took some photos, and started back down.  Of course we could now see the path we should have been on!  The return was a bit easier physically, but not any more comfortable for Pam's snake phobia.  No surprises, though.

Success! the 2,000,000 cache!

The waiting taxi

We returned to the hostel and rented their bikes for a little jaunt around town.  We collected a few more caches; one involved a short hike and, again, we were greeted by a kangaroo at the cache site.

One of the caches was called "To Become A Local" and in order to actually do that, you must see the Todd River flowing 3 times.  We were up on a pedestrian bridge above the "river."  It was so dry it was hard to believe that there could ever be any water there.

On the bridge over the Todd River!

Even though Winter just ended here, the area is in the midst of an unusual heat wave (just our luck!!)  By 11 we were so hot so we stopped for a drink and ice cream in the shopping area.  It was also the designated time for me (Lori) to connect with Meg and Carter to hear all about kindergarten.  Busted!!  Just as the screen connected, I was enjoying my double ice cream cone!!

Grandma's busted!! Happy conversation with Carter

We shopped in a few of the art stores, and Pam bought a beautiful canvas of Aboriginal design called The Spirit Sisters.   Gorgeous colours and design.  It will look great on her wall.

We came back to the hostel to return the bikes, and just hung around in the shade.  I boiled up some eggs to take on our trip tomorrow, and Pam did some laundry.  We got caught up on some correspondence, and I had a little catnap. 

We got ourselves organized for our Uluru adventure, and walked down the street for dinner at the bowling alley restaurant called the Red Tomato.  The only choices tonight were pizza or the Indian buffet.  We had a delicious pizza, and got them to make us up a salad.

We have to be at breakfast at 5:30 am and off on the bus by 6, so we'll have an early night.  This time tomorrow, we will be sleeping under the stars near Uluru.  We are both excited (and nervous) to see the stars in such a remote place with no cloud cover.  We'll be gone for three days, so we'll be out of range until Saturday night, then off Sunday to Darwin.  We'll catch up sometime Sunday, hopefully.  (If the snakes and dingoes co-operate.....!)