We said goodbye to our new friends Adrian and Vivian and their two children Sophie and Leon, and left Kings Canyon at 8 this morning. On the way out, we spotted our first camel in the wild.
We arrived in Alice Springs just after 1pm on the fumes of diesel. We have checked into a caravan park for the night and have left the trailer there and are going to check out Standley Chasm.
The chasm was just a short walk, and quite a pretty piece of rock. It's supposed to be spectacular when the light hits it in the middle of the day, because the walls are made of some kind of quartz. We were there around 3.30, so the sun didn't reach into it anymore.
Standley Chasm is just one tiny pocket of things to look at in the West McDonnell Ranges. We didn't have time to do much poking around this trip - it would really deserve its own trip another day. We found this map of the Larapinta Trail, which would take something like a week or two to hike. Not sure our fitness levels will ever be up to that!
There is quite a large playground over the road from our campground tonight, and the boys had a great time scrambling all over it this afternoon when we got back. We are staying in a suburb of Alice Springs called Araluen, which is pretty cool because the book series we are reading (Rangers Apprentice by John Flanagan) is set in the country of Araluen.
We met a couple tonight who chatted with us about our vague plans to travel Tasmania sometime in the next couple of years and being from there they gave us a few tips.
We will be on the road again first thing tomorrow, heading for Devil's Marbles.
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