I didn't have any doubts that today would be a fun one, but I'm a little shocked by just how much I like little Alice Springs, a speck of a city in a brown sea of emptiness. It was a long and hot 45 minute walk to a Hertz rental spot to pick up our ute (so called as it's a sport UTility vehicle and because ute is hands down way more fun to say than SUV) but having our own wheels gave us a chance to change things up on the fly without having to pray the single Uber driver in town felt like working (that's not a joke; I checked multiple times and it was always the same lonely guy!) Driving here is a surprisingly relaxing affair. Nobody is in a rush, which is made excruciatingly obvious by their chosen speed. It's infuriating at first, but when you finally jump on the wagon and agree to just get there when you get there, all roads lead to relaxation. Sounds fruity but I mean it. I love driving here! We'd done a little guidebook investigation and flipped through a dozen or so hotel brochures to find some interesting stops in town, one of which was the Alice Springs Desert Park. It didn't seem all that alluring and their marketing directors need to be sacked but we heard so many glowing reviews of the place from other travelers that we just had to check it out. I'm so glad we did! This place sets the standard to which every other park and zoo on the planet should aspire. It's essentially an outdoor walk through several desert environments. There were only a handful of people in the whole place, and it felt like we were taking a stroll through a lonely desert minus the looming threat of dehydrated death. Sounds boring, right? Nay nay! Indigenous birds of dizzying variety, snoozing kangaroos, trotting emus, and panting dingoes were featured in what has to be technically described as a cage, but bears no resemblance to the wire and glass enclosures we're used to. If the animals felt like it they could've gotten close enough for us to pick up and hold (sadly, no kangaroos showed interest in getting or giving a piggyback ride). Regular shady overhangs gave us a place to sit and cool down while watching birds flutter from branch to branch. Many of them spent a lot of time just walking along the ground instead of using their mesmerizingly colorful wings, which I found especially curious. Maybe they expend less energy that way? I'll be googling it later... At any rate, a real highlight came about half way through our walk when we arrived at the nocturnal house. Owing to the constantly triple digit temperatures during the day, many of Australia's fuzziest critters are nocturnal and we'd never have the chance to spot them in the wild. In this purpose-built house the lights are dimmed during the day and blaring at night. Spacious and detailed habitats were crawling with a huge variety of hopping mice, maras, quolls, lizards and bats; I had no idea just how full of life this beautiful death trap of a place really is. Almost everything was happily hopping or scurrying about, carrying on as if it truly was the dead of the night. What an amazingly fantastic idea to include this in the park! I think that was our favorite part of the day, come to think if it. A half hour in the AC certainly didn't hurt either. Even with the deadly heat we stayed surprisingly dry. I don't know if I just wasn't sweating without the humidity or if it was drying out as fast as it appeared under the scorching sun, but...no pit stains woot woot! Squinting behind our sunglasses as we stepped from pale blue darkness into sizzling white light, we finished our walk with a look at some baby emus and a nice long visit in the gift shop. From there I was reminded by Brittany that it was time for lunch (she could probably sense the stroke of noon while blindfolded in a submarine) and we drove into town for a quick bite. Downtown is mainly a long string of restaurants and quirky shops, all accessed from pedestrian-only streets lined with shade trees. There was a certain home-spun charm about it all, from the cooling breezes to the occasionally mumbled "g'day." Brittany thinks I'd grow tired of it more quickly than I expect and she's probably right, but for now the whole place puts a little spring in my step. A sign for a movie house caught our eye while we sipped a dripping-cold beer under the trees, and, as just about everything here closes at 5pm, it was the obvious choice in a town as devoid as night life as it is babbling brooks. It was still early yet, and I'd been jonesing to see the fifty year old Reptile House. It's pretty much an institution around here and was the only place I could find to see the Inland Taipan, which is generally considered the world's most venomous snake. Fun fact: venom isn't the same as poison because it can be swallowed without killing you, so feel free to drink up! The slithering reptiles were awe-inspiring in their own right, but seeing them all cooped up in tiny bland enclosures was a real letdown after seeing what could be at the Desert Park. If the park threw in a few deadly snakes they could pretty much scrap this place altogether (that sounded like a better idea in my head than on the page), and we were out after less than an hour. It was a quirky b-level kinda thing though, and I got a real kick out of some newspaper clippings at the back of the building. The Northern Territory is a "special" place - quotations required- and the proof is in the headlines: "Crikey! A Cannibal Croc!" "Driver Snaps in Beer, Not Boy", and "Man Stabbed With Fish" to name just a few. Who wouldn't love it here? We had time for one more attraction in town, and the Royal Flying Doctor Service was across the street. It was one of those things I really didn't have any desire to see but knew I'd regret skipping. Getting medical attention in the middle of the desert, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest town, was and still is a wildly tough proposition. This museum explained how the service came to be and what's involved today. There was a really interesting video at the beginning that was totally ruined by some absolutely awful acting, and by the end Brittany was snorting with laughter among a group of stoically silent seniors (to my embarrassment). It was surprisingly interesting to learn about the inventions required just to make the service feasible. Even if you have the planes, pilots and doctors, how would you ever know someone needed your help before cell phones and accessible telegraph lines? They actually had to commission the invention of a pedal-operated wireless radio and some of the original models were on display. I can't imagine lugging one of these hulking metal contraptions into the house, let alone across the continent, but you do whatchya gotta do out here. The coolest part came when I got to climb into a scale model of the planes they use, and my fetching photos make it abundantly clear that I'd be a spectacle wherever I flew; truly a sight to behold :) There were a million little switches and k*** in the cockpit which I happily flipped and turned while quietly muttering"breaker, breaker 1-9, on final approach krrrrkkkk over" until a bewildered, sustained stare from a gift shop employee made it clear that playtime was over. Aww, man! With an hour to kill before the movie started we nursed yet another cold beer by the hotel bar (it really hits the spot!) and filled out a big fat stack of postcards. Sure we could send them from Sydney, but it just seems so much cooler to know that they came from the heart of the country in a town plenty of people have never even heard of! The theater wasn't much different from ours (save for the curious absence of in-seat cup holders) and I was more than a tiny bit bummed that they don't have any ham and cheese flavored popcorn. I guess we'll just have to revisit Hungary to savor that pinnacle of cinematic delicacies. The movie was set in Australia, made in Australia, thought provoking and excellently acted, but it was one of those powerful films that made you walk out saying, "that was great, but I absolutely never want to see it again." There's enough tough reality on the news every day; I prefer my movies to make me laugh rather than remind me of how messed up people can be. A whole family of aborigines sat on some steps by the concession stand as we left. They just silently watched a screen playing a loop of new release previews, seeming to stare without seeing. I wonder where they're laying their heads tonight. Cue introspective sigh... Stuffed with popcorn we skipped a sit-down dinner and opted to split a room service pizza. Bring on the robes and awkward, half-dressed encounter with the food delivery person! Fat, happy, and just about ready for bed, we went to bring in some clean clothes that Brittany had set out on the balcony to dry. Did you know it's a bad idea to hang things over a windy third floor balcony railing? Brittany did not. Fortunately only one piece of clothing plummeted to its earthly demise, and we unanimously decided it would be way too much work to retrieve. I'll go ahead and assume that the lawn mower man will have no problem finding a solid use for a women's size medium long sleeved travel shirt, and to him I say, "You're welcome."