You Can Check Out Any Time You Like But You Can Never Leave

So it turns out that the gravitational force at Uluru is greater than Virgin Blue can deal with , . . .  at least on the first several attempts.  After the cancellation of our original flight and failing to make it out the airline sent us back to the resort and put us up at "Sails in the Desert" hotel.  Was actually good in some ways since we got a little down time and were able to recharge our energy level.  We each had $50 credit for food so we enjoyed a good dinner that evening.  ($50 is about 1/2 of what a full meal would cost there by the way).   The three of us had a really good time and the dinner was one of the high points of our time together.

The next day we made our second attempt and that is when the real fun began.  We were supposed to depart at 12:50 but when our plane arrived there was a problem that needed to be signed off by qualified personnel and there were none since the operation is so small there.  Eventually they flew in an engineer and flight crew on an otherwise empty jet and he cleared the plane for flight.  We got on our way to Sydney but arrived too late to make our connection to Adelaide.  They shipped us off to a nearby motel with promises of early morning flights the next day.  Arriving at the motel we were somewhat rudely greeted by the clerk that informed us that Virgin Blue had only make provision for about 7 rooms not the 35 or so that we needed.  Long delays followed and irritation rose.  Eventually something happened that allowed progress and we checked in. 

4 hours later we were waiting on a shuttle to return to the airport for our flight to Adelaide.  We did make it on that flight on time and arrived about 8:30 at Adelaide.  The original plan was to explore Adelaide for a day or two and then drive the coast road around to Melbourne.  We did spend a few hours in Adelaide but then needed to start our drive.  An hour out of Adelaide we made a stop that turned out to be something most unexpected.  Hilarious laughter ensued.  In the middle of this we got a call from Leigh Ann that also included Candy on the line via Skype.  We had a lot of fun relating our experience there in real time.  I'll make sure to describe it all (with pictures) in any upcoming post but it's too much to cover here.

We drove until 9 pm and stopped for the night in Mt Gambier.  Today we want to drive the Great Ocean Road back to Melbourne, explore some of the seaside towns and capture some more pictures.

Sorry I can't do the full blog with pictures right now but I will get it all posted eventually.  (Might be from Ohio in a few weeks.)

We are having fun and feel very lucky to get to do this.

See you on down the road.