Thursday March 11th—Day Seven

Today we woke up as usual… around 6am or so.It's hard to say what time it was exactly since I didn't bring any items from civilization, cell phone and watch included!(It has actually been quite lovely not having the distractions of technology… I HAD to bring my Ipod though, too much driving not to!)Around 7am the troop headed out for a morning hike to explore some of the National Park trails.Our first hike was along the Circular Pool Route in search of a swimming hole as promised.Even though it was still early in the morning, we were all working up a sweat so when we arrived at the natural swimming spring it was gratefully accepted!We spent about 45 minutes frolicking around in the water before getting out to dry off.Barry, our tour guide then decided to show me the "awesome" photos of a King Brown Snake that he took just at the side of the pool where we were swimming.Even better news… apparently the King Brown is the 3rd deadliest snake in the WORLD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Brown_Snake )!Side note: I still love Australia!We decided to continue on our hike through Dames Gorges to seek out an even more beautiful swimming area.The landscape changed from silica rock and iron ore littered with undisturbed asbestos to a more vegetated mixture with lots of boulders!Barry warned us to watch out for snakes and let him know if you see anything since we were heading into snake territory.Well guess who was the lucky one to see an Olive Python? Yup!ME!!! ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liasis_olivaceus )As the others in front of me were trying to figure out how to cross a creek, I was stuck in the tall grasses (aka area most likely INFESTED with snakes).I just happened to look down and BAM!an olive python only about a foot away from me that seemed to have just enjoyed a meal as indicated by the two bumps slowly being pushed through the length of its body!

After the snake entertainment we reached Fortescue Falls.This place is spectacular and very welcomed because by then we were no longer sopping wet with spring water, but now sweat.We spent about an hour enjoying the scenery and massaging properties of the waterfalls before trekking uphill back to our campsite for lunch.

While lunch was being prepped I decided to re-live my camp counselor days and do a little outback-style tie-dye!Supplies were pretty straightforward, the shirt straight off my back soaked in water and then rubbed in the red outback dirt!After lunch we visited the Karijini National Park Visitor Center to give our bodies a break from the sun and scorching temperatures.I checked out some of the artifacts and informed myself on some aboriginal customs.

After cooling off we raced back to the campsite to put our rain flys on our tents because the skies were looking threatening and there was a good chance that we were about to experience a rare outback rain.The temperature dropped pretty quickly but we only had a very light sprinkle so we decided to head past Fortescue Falls to another swimming gorge—Fern Pool.The scenery at each swimming hole got progressively more beautiful (although I didn't think this was possible at the first stop!)As we were swimming around the hole "created" by the Aboriginal serpent known as the Woggle, we experienced some brilliant thunder, unfortunately no lightning or rain though.I would have loved to experience an outback storm!Because of the rain, the campsite would have been very humid so we decided to kill a few hours hanging around the water and relaxing.We finally ventured back to camp for dinner—chilli con carne on pasta.