Day 8 Saddle Creek to Lake Argyle 90 kms

Roger was up early and ready to get going along with Fliss and Ben. Roger feels we may have a westerly wind today which would make it a head wind. I hope he is wrong as this would be a bit of a shock to them all when we have had so many tailwinds this trip.
Packing up was quick again this morning and Collis had time to chat with the caravaners. One old guy had chopped our wood for us last night as he carried a chainsaw with him. I had offered to buy Collis a small one for this trip but he said there was no room- I'm sure we could have found room as it did make the wood collection task so much easier. The wind is quite strong today and it is a tail wind- yes!

Short day although we have to cross the border into Western Australia and the fruit police are pretty strict so morning tea was mainly fruit with some fruit cake and the riders trying to finish off their own supplies as well. We all hate handing over food to be thrown out. At the border we pulled over and got all the riders to carry their own food boxes across so that we would not have to sit there for an hour or more while they went through everything we had on board. This worked quite well and a few only lost their honey supplies. We thought if the honey was unopened then we wouldn't have to hand it over- Wrong! They found a clove of garlic in our box which I had forgotten about.

The scenery today is just spectacular. It is so hard to describe and impossible to capture it's magnificence on film. A very special part of the world. A pleasure to cycle as mostly downhill until we turn onto the road to Lake Argyle then..... The wind direction was no longer behind them and was mostly into their faces or across them. The scenery got even better with a change to the flora from boab & gum trees to ferns and grevillea in flower.

Frequent views of the lake kept teasing us and then after lots of downhills they hit a couple of steep up hills which most found a bit of a challenge at the end of the day. Lake Argyle Resort is a bit of paradise in a very arid area. Up till now we have had green nearly all the way across the top end but just in the last couple of days we have noticed that it has become very brown and much dryer around this area. Their wet season was apparently non existent and most rivers are empty. We heard today that Broome has had 4 days of torrential rain and all dirt roads into the area are closed. The bitumen roads we are taking are still open at this time. Hopefully this means things may green up slightly by the time we get there. The resort has an infinity pool with a spectacular view over the lake. The water is very cold. The restaurant has a small menu with some things reasonably priced and then others quite expensive. You are a captive audience here as there is nothing else around. The staff are lovely and everyone very helpful. Dinner was good and live music tonight and he could sing. Very enjoyable. Probably one too many scotches but did control myself a little. Nice cooling breeze tonight and Jacquei had gone to bed at 6.30 (WA time) but the rest of us were trying to remain awake until after 8.30 pm if possible. Rest day tomorrow.