After a very pleasant and quiet night's sleep we were up and on the road by 10.00am. We decided to take the Lake King road as it was a much cooler day and the guy at the caravan park said there was only about 45km of unsealed road. We would be travelling south east today with the expectation that we may get to Esperance. The unsealed section was pretty good but we ended up with heaps of red dust in the bathroom. Seems the exhaust fan is dragging the dust in. I considered the countryside boring as it was mainly farming land with many salt pans and endless mallee scrub. As the day progressed it got cooler and cooler and eventually I changed into track pants and windcheater – who could have imagined that after the past few days. According to my thermometer it only got to 30 degrees.

Eventually we hit Highway 1 at Ravensthorpe which is only about 50km from the Southern Ocean so not only did the countryside change dramatically so did the road. It became hilly and there was so much green to the foliage, I just loved it. We turned left at Ravensthorpe and headed east towards Esperance. About 25kms out of Esperance we had phone reception, we hadn’t had the phone since we left Perth. We stopped at "Peace Park" about 5-10kms from Esperance for our overnighter. It’s right next to the highway but we figure on a Monday night can’t be that bad. Although we can’t quite see the coast we know it’s not very far away and we’ve heard so much about the beaches down here that we can’t wait to see them.

I took the opportunity to chat away on the phone and then we had a couple of games of backgammon. It was a beautiful night.