Cat Tales: Miscellany and Mischief

Day 5--Lake Eyre National Park

30DBC December 5 Prompt: We are well and truly in the outback now, so make sure to bring plenty of water, sunscreen, and aloe vera in case of sunburns! December is summer in 'straya. We're travelling 5 1/2 hours by car in the early morning today up to Lake Eyre National Park - and camping out there for the night- we're making our way up to Alice Springs in Northern Territory via Stuart Highway and will continue doing so in the morning.


This. This is what I've been waiting for.

Not the car ride, of course. If I had the intelligence and gift of invention, I'd make my own teleporter before I stepped foot in a car again. Y'all should know this by now.

No. It's the beauty of a new world, an entirely different world from my own. It's Lake Eyre National Park.


Before we get there, I am studying pictures of it on Google Maps on my phone. the Wordy Jay has kindly sat beside me in the van and suggested I look forward to the destination, since I can't enjoy the journey like I want to, due to my anxiety. So I'm doing exactly that.

The pictures tell of a world that reminds me vaguely of what I'd always imagined Mars being like--red sands everywhere, a crater of indigo water for a lake, small shrubs and vegetation and more wildlife than I could have ever imagined surviving in such a seemingly arid land.

It's like an alien landscape, and I can hardly wait to be there.

When we finally do arrive, I'm shaken awake by Princess Megan Rose . Thermos in hand (I can't relinquish my hot coffee even in summer), I sit up and glance out the window. The images in my mind and my dreams had become real.

Excitement pulses through me. I'd managed to fall asleep in the car. We'd made it safely here. And now I had all day to explore this fantasy land.

The day is a blur to me now. I laughed and danced and basked in the almost-suffocating warmth of the sun. I took more notes and pictures than could fit on my phone, spilling over in messy ink scribbles into my bullet journal.

And now, as I sit here in the tent I'm sharing with Apondia and Dragon is hiding , I lay back and listen with amiable pleasure to the conversations happening all around me. I'm tired, burnt despite the sunscreen, and too elated to sleep. But the aloe vera is cooling my skin, and even as I smile I drift off to my first deep, peaceful sleep since the journey began.

AlyCatAuthor


AlyCatAuthor