Wednesday, June 4, 2014

The Pinnacles

We had a lovely day for a drive through the country.  It was a bright sunshiny day with temperatures in the low 20’s…………..(that would be the low 70’s for us). 

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The drive north from Perth was 220 kilometers, mostly along two-lane roads.  But traffic was light, weather was good, and the roads were great.

I have shown a picture of our Hyundai ix35 (the copper chariot).  It has been a terrific car for our travels around Western Australia.  We have driven well over 2,000 kilometers, at an average of 7.5 liters per 100 kilometers.  It is very comfortable to drive.  Roy has been my navigator the entire trip, so I didn’t have to worry about how we got there.  That makes things much easier when driving on the “other” side of the road and on the “other” side of the car.

The road was mostly through bush country and past small coastal towns.  Our first stop was at Cervantes where there is an information center for the Pinnacles and Nambung National Park.  The information center was actually a small variety store.  The store clerk was very helpful in providing us a couple of maps and information.  I say variety store, but the variety was very different from what most people would expect.  It had a whole wall of bolts and nuts (1/2” bolts 5” long, and bigger).  A display of needle and thread…..but no fabric, lots of fishing tackle and bait (live and artificial), magazines, and of course tourist “art” objects.  It was fun just wondering around the store.

From there we went to the Lobster Shack for lunch.  This area is famous for its lobsters.  It was an outdoor eatery and had four items on the menu.  Fish and Chips, Sea Food Medallions, and Lobster 1/2 or whole).  The food was great.  I got a kick out of the sign in the middle of the restaurant.

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This is the first time I have been to a place where the distance to Cape Town, South Africa is a shorter distance than New York City!

After lunch we found a place where Katie could put her feet in the Indian Ocean.  This has been her tradition since she was a little girl.

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She has now waded in the Atlantic, Pacific (from both sides), The Southern Ocean, The Indian Ocean, The Tasman Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea.

From there we went to Nambung National Park and The Pinnacles.  This is a desert area just inland from the Indian Ocean, where thousands of limestone rocks have been exposed.  The rocks stick up out of the stand like little pinnacles. 

When you drive into the area, it is hard to believe they are there because it looks like just bush country.  This is the board walk leading to the interpretive center. 

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But just a short distance you find this.

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This view is looking toward the coast and Indian Ocean.

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There is road through the area with lots of turn outs so you can stop and explore the area.

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This will give you and idea of the size of the pinnacles.  As you can see the size varies.  These are not boulders sitting on top of the sand, but the tops of bigger rocks that have been exposed through erosion over thousands of years.  Think icebergs where most of the rock is below ground level.

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Here is a picture of the four of us at the Pinnacles. 

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I will leave you with this final picture of “public art” from Perth.  We have passed it many times during the day and though it was interesting, but at night, with the shadows from by the multiple layers of metal really makes it look like a lot of kangaroos are passing by.

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This will probably be our last entry in the blog until we get home.  We start our journey back tomorrow with a flight to Melbourne.  Then Saturday, we fly from Melbourne to Auckland to Los Angeles and on Sunday we fly from Los Angeles to Omaha via Denver.

This has been a fun trip.  We thank Roy and Sylvia for flying over from their home in Brisbane to join us for these almost three weeks.  And a special thanks to Gilly and Terri for organizing all of us during the Magpie meet up week.  We got to see a part of Australia we didn’t expect to and meet some great people.

Until the trip wrap-up…..thanks for coming along.

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