Day 12

Our pre retirement trial trip- day 12
254 km Oodnadatta to Marla SA

The aim today was detour off the Oodnadatta Track to continue our journey on the Painted Desert Road, through the Arckaringa Hills to walk at the Painted Desert on the Arckaringa Station. Job done✔️

⏰ Time messed with our heads this morning, our phones had diverted to NT time (1 hour behind) and we didn’t realise until we were on the road

OMG the Painted Desert is out of this world, if you said we were on Mars we wouldn’t have argued 🪐
We stopped at the Mt Batterbee lookout with its 360 views of the hills, and then to walk amongst them. The colours were spectacular everywhere you looked🌄. And it certainly made up for the journey through them 😳

The Painted Desert Road beats the Oodnadatta Track hands down and not in a good way🥇, and you won’t change our minds on that 😜
It’s 173km of the worst dirt road we have EVER experienced with corrugations, washouts, bull dust, dry rocky creek beds…….. it has it all.
Plus don’t rely on google maps as it would take you the wrong way, we used Maps.me so all good

We didn’t see a single sole on the entire journey, expect those mustering the cattle 🐂🐂🐂🐂

We had planned to stay at Arckaringa Station but rain was forecast and the skies were looking ominous, we wouldn’t have had the spectacular sunset, sunrise and starry skies we were hoping for, and we certainly didn’t want to add wet roads to the list of obstacles so we continued through to the Stuart Hwy.

Passing through Marla, the pull of a pool at the Travellers Rest was too much so we stopped there- and it was soooooo refreshing after being hot and dusty 🏊‍♂️🏊‍♀️
And 35 degrees now seems quite acceptable ☀️

After feeling quite stressed by today’s journey, we are now feeling much more relaxed

Home for the night Marla Travellers Rest
$45 for power, water available at some sites
Showers and toilets, pool, restaurant, bar, roadhouse with groceries and a mini Kings outletもっと詳しく