Pretty quiet day in Alice Springs today - 'Picnic Day' public holiday due to Darwin Cup today. Not a lot open. Baz caught up on some work today, a little bit of shopping by the family, a swim before the weather cooled and another dinner on the BBQ. Penny was in charge of the camera today - as can be seen by the blog photo. Tomorrow we plan to explore Alice fully so will hopefully have more to report. Key Stats KM's - 39; Steps - 10,238; Max Temperature - ...

Today we left our beautiful camp site at the Ellery Creek Big Hole and made our way further down the West McDonnell Ranges towards Alice Springs. Only one stop for the day - Standley Chasm - an alleyway that slices quartzite rock. The gentle 2.5km round walk was well worth it. We then made our way to the Big 4 caravan park in Alice. On a day of 28 degrees it was time to treat ourselves to a real resort. Swimming pool, jumping pillows, playgrounds, waterslide...

Today was an amazing day spent exploring the West McDonnell Ranges. We decided late to leave our camp site at Glen Helen to have a look at the mountain ranges and gorges whilst venturing towards Alice Springs. Whilst we were packing up a local galah named Mr G ventured to our campsite. Mr G took a liking to Baz. He quickly climbed up his arm, sat on his shoulder and lay his head down flat for a pat. We realised quite quickly that Mr G didn't like either fema...

After discussing the various routes with fellow campers we decided to head to Alice Springs via the West McDonnell Ranges and visiting some of the gorges. The quickest way to undertake this trip was by tackling the Mereenie Loop. About 120kms of this route was an unsealed road. Although our van is a semi off road vehicle, we thought that as long as we took it easy we would be ok. 1 broken glass, 2 broken reflectors, some wire damage under the van, a few sto...

Happy 9th wedding anniversary Penelope. After a nice sleep in we tackled the rim walk around Kings Canyon. Although only 6kms this walk was much more difficult than the 10km Uluru walk. The initial part of the walk was the steep ascent up rock stairways to the top of the mountain. We then traced the rim (hence the name of the walk) around the canyon, descended down to visit the garden of eden before climbing back up for the remaining part of the rim walk....