Chloe complained of the cold, and Charlie ended up sleeping with us.
It was the usual kerfuffle getting going, and we ended up leaving first after having a quick hose down to remove the sand, fuelling up on the way to Macdonalds and picking up the coffee etc... that Sue had bought for us.
I wasn't going that quick, and after a wee stop the others quickly caught us. A few times I had to catch up, I found it amusing that you can finally catch Warren after doing 115-120Kph for some time, but when you catch him, he'll slow down.
We passed a few spots I'd been to previously when driving to Gawler to visit James, which brought back some memories. Later, driving between Port Pirie and Port Augusta I was reminded of when we drove to Whyalla last December for James' funeral. You could see Whyalla across the Gulf, and the hills away to the East.
When you're not trying to avoid falling asleep, or fidgeting, you get a lot of time to think while you're driving. Warren said on the radio today that we'd just passed 3,000KM for the trip. I was thinking today that despite the annoying bits, early starts and long days, that this is really quite relaxing in comparison to working and our day to day grind.
I remarked to Katrina that it would be nice though to get somewhere early, setup camp and relax, still though I'm enjoying it.
Once in Port Augusta we had some shopping to do. I tried putting our tarp up over the tent in Beachport and pulled the rings out of the corners. So we're using that tarp under the tent now, with a new tarp over the top. We also did some food shopping, I was stressing a little as I hadn't planned it very well and I'm worried about packing it all in, making it fit and having enough. Later we found I'd forgotten the pullups for Charlie.
When we got to Port Augusta the sun was out and it was quite pleasant. The raid radar showed rain to the East and moving away, through the Weatherzone forecast still showed rain. When we got out of the supermarket, we saw the ominous clouds approaching.
Our plan had been to shop, then move out of town and camp somewhere. While in town, Brad was talking about a farm stay, however we ended up in a caravan park in Quorn. While we were checking in, Sue was asking about cabins. I briefly thought about a cabin but decided we'd be OK. We setup our new tarp, put up the tent underneath it, then moved in.
With hindsight, and I had a bit of a premonition when I saw we'd been given site No. 13, I should have known I'd be in for the usual "13" happenings, which always seem to happen in threes.
Things were mostly going according to plan when we heard a noise and looked up to see the awning over the top of the car. Looks like I'll be buying Damian a new awning. Rooke mistake, we didn't peg it down.
Things were going to plan after that, the tent was coming up under the tarp, until I tried to adjust the tarp and it all fell over. Warren and Brad to the rescue again, Brad loaned us an occy strap andj Warren helped while we double guy roped each corner, which was much more stable. Still couldn't get as much tension into it as I would like, so we adjusted it until at least the water wasn't pooling and it was running off in the back corner.
I knew the signs, these always happen in threes, but it was relatively straight forward after that. Warren, Sue and the kids cooked nachos, Kat got the beds made up, we got the kids to bed and I thought Id put a few things through the dryer, only I put them into a front loading washing machine by mistake. By the time I got them out they needed to have the water wrung out, and I needed to borrow some coins off Brad again for the real dryer. Oh well, there's number three.
So we tested out the "wet" camping skills a little. Hopefully they won't need to be used again for some time.
Brad and Warren called me over to look at the plan for the next few days. Drive into the Flinders, spend a day at a site relaxing, before another easy drive the next day. I liked the sound of it.
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