Kings Canyon

18th June 2013

We slept in this morning with us rising around 7.30am, after breakfast we packed down the van and got ourselves ready to tackle Kings Canyon on foot. We made the short drive to the canyon carpark where we rugged up (it was about 10 degrees this morning with a wind chill factor of about 7) and set ourselves for the 5.5km gorge rim hike.

Start of the hike at Kings Canyon

The start of the hike saw us climb directly up the edge of the gorge via some rocky steps for about 750m, lets just say we were certainly warmer by the time we reached the rim of the gorge, however the wind chill was even worse with the change in altitude.

The Family half way up the first climb at Kings Canyon

We spent the next 3hrs hiking over and around Kings Canyon with the views of the canyon and out to the valley below absolutely stunning. We once again felt very lucky to be experiencing such a magnificent piece of Australia.

             

The girls at Kings Canyon

Once we had made it back to the carpark, we made our way to a picnic spot nearby and braving the cold had lunch before hitting the road again and making our way down to Uluru, which as you can imagine we were extremely excited about.

Kings Canyon

It took us about 3 & half hours to reach Yulara, the purpose built town which services the tourist industry that "The Rock" brings to the red centre. We arrived about 4.30pm to still a very cold and overcast day which meant there was no point rushing out to try and catch a sunset on Uluru. Instead we went to the caravan park lookout where Uluru was clearly visible, which was great to see.

Not a bad view from the Caravan Park Lookout

While we were walking around near our camp site, we got chatting to a couple of people in the park and unbelievabley it turned out that one of the couples was from Molong and had basically grown up with Rach's mum & dad, talk about your small worlds.

So after some chatting down there, we made our way back to the van and got ourselves sorted for tomorrow, which has been forecast for 14 degrees and rain, but we'll make the most of our day what ever it brings.

After all we are at Uluru and it'll be fantastic no matter what, until then....