Sunset view from our camp at Palm Valley Dan on two wheels

All of us at Palm Valley

Escarpments at Palm Valley

14th and 15th June, 2009
Packed up bright and early as we wanted to hike around Kings Canyon before heading to Palm Valley. We hiked the Kings Canyon River walk and the scenary was beautiful. I’m going to stop writing about it at this point, because there are only so many ways to describe “red rock, blue sky, white cloud”. Take it from me though – well worth the walk. We didn’t do the ridge walk as Dan would not have had it in him. Also, Steve fell off the trailer the morning before while trying to flatten the canopy down so he was very happy to blame the shorter walk on Dan too. Lately, we can get between 3 and 4 km worth of hiking, but that’s about his limit – good enough though.

Then we drove off to Palm Valley via the Mereenie Loop. Once we left the blacktop, it was about 100km of soul destroying, bone rattling corrugations. Dan got car sick from the juddering and undulations and started vomiting (luckily we gave him the car sick bags as soon as he started saying he didn’t feel well). By the time we got to Palm Valley we were all over it. However, the place has been worth every bit of it. The camp is surrounded by red escarpment and dingoes! Every time you look up there’s another one staring at you from the grasses. We sat around the campfire last night, but kept the torches handy to investigate every rustle we heard. I tried to convince the boys that they wouldn’t come near the tent, while Steve was in the background chasing them away – luckily they believed us and went to bed.

This morning we hiked through the gorges which the place is named after. Amazing – I had to keep reminding myself I’m in Central Australia looking at these little water holes, surrounded by Cycad Palms and the rare Red Cabbage Palm in the middle of these red rock escarpments. Quite surreal.

Richard and Carolyn left after that for Alice which is quite sad – we’ve really enjoyed their company. Carolyn and I swapped details so we could get together in Alice only to find (after they were out of radio range) that we’d given each other our own details back! Hope we find them….

Tomorrow morning we’re heading off to Alice Springs as well. We’ve booked 5 nights at the Big 4 to re-stock and do some repairs…