Cat Tales: Miscellany and Mischief

Day 6--Roadtrip Day

30DBC December 6 Prompt: It's roadtrip day! We're driving 15 1/2 hours up Lasseter Highway through the Outback to get from Lake Eyre to Uluru National Park, where Ayers Rock is, and then another 6 hours from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs. We'll switch drivers around the 8-hour mark and after Ayers Rock for safety reasons, but hopefully nobody gets carsick! We'll be staying the night in Lasseters Hotel once we get to Alice Springs.


Good heavens. A day of bliss followed by a day straight out of my worst nightmare.

To be fair, being in the car for what amounted to 17 hours after all the pit stops and meal breaks is some decent exposure therapy. After the first five hours, I start dozing, only to be woken up an hour later by BlueMoon for our first pit stop. I gratefully clamber out of the car, stretching my aching hips, to find my sciatic nerve is complaining at me. I groan. "At least 10 more hours of this to go." I plod inside the gas station we stopped at, noting that it's in the middle of literally nowhere. The cashier smiles kindly at me as I purchase my coffee and in the back of my mind, I wonder where he lives. Surely he doesn't drive 6 hours to get to work every day. But going back outside, it's still just a hot, dry wasteland, with a few scattered shrubs and a lot of red sand.

Shrugging this off, I reluctantly get back in the car and settle my hips back against my lumbar support pillow. Thank goodness my husband had insisted I take it for the trip. The hours pass dully, and I watch the track the sun makes in the sky overhead. When I get tired of listening to my music (the same playlist has been on repeat for hours), I try to read a book on my Kindle app. When that only results in a nauseous stomach, I give up and turn on a podcast. The words go in one ear and out the other--my mind is far away, dreaming of being back at my desk in my cozy little office, frantically outlining the scenes that are playing in my head.

We stop for dinner later. Even those who had been chatty had long since quieted or dozed, but seeing each other face to face outside of the cars seems to perk everyone back up. I commiserate with brothernature and Apondia about their cramped legs and actually eat my meal standing to give my poor sciatic nerve some relief. One sandwich, two bags of chips and two bottles of water later, I strap myself back into the car with the others, not feeling so terrible about the remaining four hours of driving.

Once we finally get to Ayers Rock, we're all so worn out from the ride that it's hard to enjoy it. But as the sun sinks behind the massive plateau of rock, we're all dazzled by its enormity. Its bulk eclipses the fading sunlight and glows a dusty orange-red as we look on in awe.

We don't stay long after dark, as we're all still tired and eager to lie down in a nice, soft hotel bed. After another switch of drivers, we all settle in, and most of us are asleep long before the sun has completed its descent below the horizon. After walking around, though, my sciatic nerve feels much better, and I decide to do some reading since it's dark and my eyes can't see the stupid road outside to get car sick over.

After one more pit stop and a few more hours of driving, we make it to the hotel in Alice Springs well into the early morning. FINALLY. Everyone stumbles out of the cars and prays that we'll have some time to get some decent sleep before our adventures here in Alice Springs tomorrow.

AlyCatAuthor