[Lupine]
day 8 yulara to erldunda
woke up at some ungodly hour of the morning to go and see sunrise at uluru. to be honest i'm not sure what to make of it. it might be that i'm colorblind, or i might just be a bit weird. probably a little of both i guess, but while the sunset was pretty cool, and the viewing area gave a fantastic view of the color changes and it looked just like all the pictures you see, the new sunrise viewing area seems to have been designed to stick as many trees in the way as possible.
i swear to god, the level of genius required to put a viewing platform on top of a hill and manage to ensure thatevery single vantage point has a fucking great tree in the way is incredible. goddam DaVinci of surveyers, coupled with the hawkins of site developers ensure some ratty ass, stunted, malformed australian bush is right smack in the middle of every fucking shot possible.
i also wish i'd had another day here. i'd have liked to watch a sunrise from the sunset viewing area. i just think it would be cool to watch the sun risefrom behind the rock, rather than just watch it get lit up... but maybe that's just me.
we had a bit of a discussion yesterdayn about what to do today. i made the suggestion that if perhaps Boo would like to go and have a good look at the olgas, and see around the rock, i could be persuaded to leave her alone for around 4 hours. see the W.A. border is just 190Klm from the olgas down some pretty rugged looking dirt road. it looks just like the bulldust corrogated areas of the plenty, and i was pretty sure that if i was by myself i'd be able to get there and back in about 4 hours including a couple of stops and some photos. this was not the most popular idea i've ever floated and was voted down by a majority of 3to 1. i wanted to go and she didn't want me to. i lost. oh well, there's always next year when i undertake a 5 deserts trip in 2 weeks. i haven't told her about that yet...
anyways, we spent the morning posting off stuff we'd bought and didn't want to carry with us, doing routine maintainance on the bikes and cleaning up video cards and photo sets. we left yulara around 14:00hrs to just head back to the main intersection for the stuart highway.
an earlyish stop in a commercial camping ground with washing machines and showers means a shower for the 3rd day in a row. what luxury! all that changes tomorrow. we're heading back onto the dirt once we get 250Klm down the stuart to Marla. from there we head along the OOdnadata track to Oodnadatta, then cut back SW past Mt Barry to coober pedy and from there it's on to cowards creek, lyndhurst, camerons corner tibooburra, wanaaring, bourke, and nindigully. once we reach Marla that's the last asphalt until we get to burke in about 11 days. goodtimes to come!
as usual, no photos, but we will be posting some eventually.
fuck off, you got some yesterday.


[lupine]
day 9 erldudnda to oodnadatta
the bestday of riding for me so far on the entire trip.
we left erldunda early and headed straight for marla which is wherethe oodnadatta track starts and it's the last time we expected to see any real asphalt until we get to bourke next wednesday. the track itself is brilliant. fast dirt road with a light coating of sand/gravel. except for a few small patches of deeper sand it was a great ride. we were hoping to get part way to oodnadatta and the track was so good that we just ran the whole way in. we stayed at the pink roadhouse caravan park which is very pink. very desolate scenery and awesome sunset. good times.

[lupine]
day 10 oodnadatta to cooberpedy
new best day of riding for me. from oodnadatta to here is fantastic. we took a detour to the painted desert which was very pretty. at least Boo thought it was really pretty but she sees more color than i do. had a bit of a moment when we rode into a dry creek bed at 80 kph. the creek bed was 2klm long and made of super soft, deep loose sand and gravle. both of us nearly binned it. scared the hell out of us :) pretty funny after. we took video of it on the way back which shows what the stuff was like.
made it to coober pedy pretty early and went to an underground opal mine and museum. then had pizza.
we're staying in an underground hotel that is dug into the side of a hill. in the morning we're going to do a mine tour and head for william creek. we have lots of pictures but can't upload them yet.
catch you later.