Minor Catch-up from Thurs to Sun 14th to 17th July, 2016

I apologise that there has been a hiatus in this trip blog for several days. I am posting almost daily updates through my Facebook page at Bill Leithhead (I’m the one at Glen Waverley), because it’s easier to take phone photos with my Samsung Galaxy 3, then post them straight into FB.

I am also attempting to do this blog, which needs images put through the laptop (I haven’t tried that via the phone). And that needs the images to be down-loaded from camera into appropriate laptop folders, then the images cropped, the quality adjusted and then images resized down to about 300 pixels wide for this blog. That needs my use of either Paint Shop Pro 8  or Irfanview on this laptop, then insertion of the image and editing into the blog text. So that takes a lot of extra effort!

I’ve also been SMSing the family, with one or two hiccups, and emailing them and others. this all takes time.

See, what has happened was that by Friday night, we found ourselves completely exhausted from our first three days of travel. We were extremely surprised by this, and dismayed. We’ve done big trips before, but the years have passed and arthritis has taken its toll, among other things. I think it’s not so much the driving, but all of the extra bending and twisting that are part and parcel of caravan living. This is exercising muscles unused to it, and that’s good, and that will improve our fitness and weight in a month or so.

So on Friday night we arrived at Gilgandra, and barely had enough energy to do more than set up the van, prepare meals, eat, wash up, take medications, and do the usual chores around the cramped van necessary for good order., and then we wrote our written trip diaries, which we have had the habit of doing for over 15 years.

Then I did the charging of cameras, phone, etc., and we both had insufficient energy to do more than the minimum, so we flaked out early and slept well through without waking. Saturday we pushed off for Moree, via Coonabrabran, a favourite town, where we had lunch and revisited the Crystal Kingdom, initially visited on a Cairns trip in this very van with our three young children in 1979. Then off to Moree, where we now are.

We booked in for 2 nights at the Gwydir Carapark, here in Moree, and have now had a relaxing day today – Sunday 17th, and have booked in for Monday night as well, giving us a free day to relax tomorrow. The hot artesian pools are excellent!

—————————————–Then on Tuesday we have resolved to travel to Lightning Ridge, a westward detour of 300 km to see the black opal fields, and probably stay two nights there.