Hello everyone,
I hope you have had a happy easter. Our car was finally fixed right before the easter weekend, so we were able to travel outside of Adelaide and see some amazing countryside over Kim's four day holiday break. We drove north through the towns of Port Wakefield, Quorn, and Hawker. Our friend Paul went with us for the weekend as well. He is a teacher from Grand Junciton, CO also here on exchange for a year. It was a spectacuar long drive, giving us our first take of the outback...
Our first stop was the small town of Quorn were we took a camel ride on the Pichi Richi Camel tours. Our guide and operator of the camel farm was Grant. (on the left) He was quite funny, and a great guide. He had two little boys and was convinced without a doubt that raising and maintaining his eight camels was much easier then his kids! The camel tour was great and a really neat experince giving us a unique way to see the countryside as the sunset...
The next two days were fantastic. We drove three hours north of Quorn through the sparsley populated dusty outback to the Flinders Ranges National Park. Along the way we stopped at Yorumbilla and saw some sacred Aboriginal caves. The caves had ancient drawings and carvings on the rock walls. At the Flinders Ranges Park we camped at the Wilpena Pound campground. While we were there we did some fantastic hiking up to highest point in the park, St. Mary's Peak. The highlight of the trip was when we took an awesome scenic flight over the mountain ranges. Definetly check out some of the photos in our photo gallery!
Our return drive back took us through the towns of Peterbourough, Burra, and Clare. It was a very long eight hour drive through dry rolling hills. I think we saw more sheep and windmills then cars for the first three hours. Later in the day, we stopped in the town of Clare for lunch and to visit some of the wineries. Clare and the Clare valley is one of the world famous wine regions in South Australia. It is especially know for the Reisling wines it produces. There are over 35 diffrent winiries and vineyards in this charming little town. We visited three wineries, Sevenhill, Pikes, and Nealson Rocks. Sevenhill wines were outstanding. They had a great park ground to walk around on outside an a magnificent church on the property.
Later next week Kim will finally get her much needed two week fall break. We are planning on doing some traveling during that time to Melbourne and Sydney and will keep you up to date with more photos and travels as we go along...
