Exmouth

Time to leave. 

After breakfast we packed up. It was a slow process as it involved 

a. getting all the sand trapped between the layers of our floor mat out... took a good half hour, and

b. getting the chocks etc. out from under the wheels in the soft sand. Let's just say that without a shovel, it would have taken longer than the 45 minutes it took to hitch up and be ready to go. 

There's no water at this spot, so the last thing we did was call by a family we met who are there for a week with their two young children and offload our excess drinking water to them. 

There's two roads to Exmouth; the bitumen we drove along a few weeks ago with Emily on board, and the coast 4WD road. Because we were already on the coast at South Lefroy, we decided to continue on this way up the western side of the peninsula to Exmouth. 

The initial 36km from South Lefroy to the end of the track at Yardie Creek took 3 hours. Without doubt,  the slowest going and worst of the trip. Lots of nearly getting bogged on sand stretches, jarring corrugations much worse than Cape York, sharp stoney sections and hard packed salt clay with wild potholes. 

It was good to get through the last sandy section at the northern end at Yardie Creek. 

We aired up the tyres and continued on and stopped at Turquoise Bay for a swim and lunch. A beautiful spot; we can see why it's popular with Exmouth locals as it's just an hour's drive around the peninsula, all on bitumen. 

We treated ourselves to breakfast, the first cafe breakfast this trip... 6 months between smashed avocados!!

Nice drive and walk to Shothole Canyon and a relaxing few days. 

It was windy up there!!!

Heading farther up the coast to Karratha for a car service and another wheel alignment on the van (needed after some terrible roads... we can see the uneven wear.)