(written by Nancy)
Once everyone settled down last night at the campground it was pretty quiet. All you could hear was the falls in the background – a nice bit of white noise to sleep to.
We weren’t sure how long or hard today’s ride was going to be – every map we looked at had different mileage and we couldn’t get much information on the status of the road, in particular the unsealed portion. We had a nice quiet ride for the first 24k until we got to the park boundary. No traffic and a little up and down but nothing too bad.
We then hit the unsealed section, which ended up being about 30k. This turned out to be harder than I’d hoped. There were lots of corrugations and thick sand and red dust – or bull dust, as they call it here – thrown in for good measure. We had to walk a bit of it, which is actually almost as hard as riding – trying to push the loaded bike through that thick dust is not too much fun. We rode when we could, moving along the road trying to find the smoothest path. It always seemed like it was smoother on the other side – classic ‘grass is always greener on the other side’ view, because when we would make our way to the other side, through all of the thick sand and corrugations in the middle, that side would quickly become as corrugated as the side we came from!
Hitting the unsealed section
Driving instructions
We had a bit of traffic on the road, which added to the pleasure when the huge clouds of dust would envelope us as the cars went by. Thankfully the wind was blowing pretty good and the dust would blow away pretty quickly. It was slow going though, ploughing through the dust and sand and bouncing up and down. We both fell at least once and were nicely covered in a layer of red dust – it sticks nicely to sweaty arms and legs.
Dusty road
At about 12k we hit a section of pavement – we though perhaps they had paved the rest of the road, as we knew they were working on paving the road in from the other end. But no, the pavement soon turned to red dirt again and we were back to battling the dust and corrugations. Finally, we started to hit some roadworks where they were preparing for the road for paving. It was still dirt but at least it had most of the corrugations smoothed out and the road was not so full of loose sand and dust. When we hit the pavement after 30k of unpaved road we were both pretty tired and very glad to see the black bitumen!
We had another 20k to go and as luck would have it it was right into the wind. But even that felt great compared to what we had come through so we just plowed ahead and made it to the Tumbling River Tourist Park. The park is okay but was already pretty full by the time we got here. We searched around a bit for a good campsite and found one that would work – looked like most of the good ones were taken. People continued to stream in and our little quiet area is now overrun with tents. It may be an interesting night…
The brochures for this park said they had a restaurant/cafe but unfortunately it is not quite open yet. They sell a few snacks and alcohol but no real food though they did have some nice mango icecream that we scarfed down while we were checking in! They even threw in some free dried mango slices which didn’t last very long either. We have enough to last for a day or two but were really looking forward to having a nice meal after the long day. We bought a bottle of wine and they lent us two real glasses to drink out of so that will have to do it for tonight – a little bit of luxury is better than nothing. We will stay here tomorrow night as well and may stay another day – there is a nice wildlife park nearby and there is supposed to be a pub down the road and a small grocery store so perhaps we can get some food there tomorrow. We’ll see how the night goes before we make too many plans…
Mango ice cream and mango chips on arrival
Hey readers – we are thinking of posting our pictures in a slideshow format (see below) as it is fairly time consuming inserting them individually in the posts. Do you like this format? Note if you hover your mouse over the slideshow the ‘activate’ bar pops up and you can stop the slide show and move from picture to picture on your own time.
Leave Without Pay 
I like the pictures more the way you have been doing them, inserted in the text. I think you do a great job of commentary and photos. Don’t do the extra work.
ditto…..
The slide show works well. Are you saying that the e-mails we have been getting with the photos embedded in them would still arrive, but not have photos? I generally don’t even go to your web page unless I’m leaving a comment, so that would be one change and you’d need to be sure to tell all your readers to go to the web page to see what you were writing about, if that were the case.
Hi Pam – you should still get the pictures in the email version but I think they will come as separate pictures at the end of the entry, rather than as a slide show (that’s the way it comes into our email box). You can click still on the pictures to see them in a bigger version.
It sounds like it would be easier to attach a slide show each day instead of embedding the photos in the text. Is that right?
I vote you two should do whatever method is easiest for you – sounds like the slide show. I like it (slideshow version) actually but I always look at your blog on the web site vs. the email.
Gretchen
If effort for you was equal I would suggest the photos embedded in the middle of the text. That gives me better context for the photo as I see the photo while reading about the part of your adventure with which it relates. I really enjoy reading the updates and look forward to starting my day with them. Whatever is easiest for you is fine — I want you to keep up the posts and not tire of them. And if easier translates to more photos all the better.