October 25 Our road trip to The Red Center

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It's been a while since I've updated, but with good reason.  We returned from our road trip a little over a week ago.   It took me this long to get organized, and try to put the whole experience together to share, while moving on at a ever frantic pace during our day to day lives.  I could write a novel on all that we saw and did, but I don't think anyone would want to read it except me in my old age.  So what I'll tell you instead,  is that we saw everything we had hoped to see.  The beauty and history found at Kakadu and the majesty and massiveness of Ayer's Rock and the Olgas did not--could not-- fail to impress. We zigzagged off and on the main road all the way there and back, and managed to see some of the Northern Territory's less visited treasures.  (And Matt had a chance to drive some true outback routes, corrugated, rutted  dirt roads that the tours busses couldn't or didn't want to traverse.)   We were lucky enough to have several chances to view the wild life to include wild camels, horses, kangaroos, wallabys, burros, birds,  lizards, and 1 echidna.  The weather was kind to us, the children were shockingly well behaved  (after a few days of figuring out our routine and the convenient purchase of a dvd player), and we made some wonderful new friends.  We laughed a lot, ate a lot, drank a lot, walked a lot,  got filthy dirty, and slept hard (in our cozy pull behind trailer camper--thanks Sean and Aaron). The trip was undeniably a success by our standards and we are already talking about our next adventure, hopefully Tasmania.  On our return home to Darwin, our new friends Johannes, Sabrina, and Hugo, whom we met along the way at several different camp sites, came to stay with us for a week before continuing their trip across to and through Eastern Australia. Once more we ate a lot, drank a lot, and laughed a lot, but it was time for them to go on and time for us to settle down for a while.  Jordan has especially been needing a little routine now that our girl is going to preschool!   Well that's the gist of it.  The pictures should tell the rest of the story.  The movies are  titled: 1.fun in the car, 2. Burro Lullaby, 3. road train  And the pictures of the signs I had to throw in because they made me laugh.  I love the way they go a step further than the American signs and give the dramatic graphics to get the point across.