Out and about & short trips in our Journey, 2022

 Woke at 6.45 & on the road at 7.15. No walk, ride or breakfast. Stopped in Benaraby free camp for the dump and the coffee van was there 🤷‍♀️😋 Home in time for an early lunch.  The Bruce Hwy is in need of some maintenance in a hurry. Very rough and pot holey in places. Fair amount of roadworks is being carried out to widen the road or improve drainage. Today we travelled 265kms, taking our total travelled hitched for this trip to 890km. Fun fact: Our Jayco camper travelled 47,782 Our Journey has travelled 19,878 Taking our total travelled hitched to 67,660 kms since February 2018. We really should get to the west. Next years plans are under way for a trip to NZ with my sister inlaw and her husband and a trip to Darwin/Kakadu with my sister and her husband. With possibly another overseas trip in between them.

There's been a mix up with when our Victorian family are coming for a visit so we'll be heading straight home tomorrow morning.  Today we are riding to the harbour again and getting on a boat to do a 2 hour cruise.  Leaving the Marina. 1 of the many islands we passed in the harbour.  22 piles of 22 different coals. Liquid Natural Gas  Gas flame. Mount Larcomb the highest point.  The tour was enjoyable and the guide was very knowledgeable  but I came away thinking I'd had information overload.  Another easy afternoon relaxing by the van. We're mostly packed up ready for an easy departure in the morning.  Today we rode 14kms and ate too much.

 Got a bit chilly overnight. At 6.15 when I went for a walk the BoM said feels like 7.6° A couple of pics from my walk    Camping area at the showgrounds.       Speedway Opposite the showgrounds.  On the bikes for another ride around the port/harbour area. Beautiful pathway and great views. Rode around to spinnaker park. The view back to where we rode yesterday.  Stopped for a coffee and booked a boat cruise around the harbour for tomorrow morning. Our ride turned chaotic after this. The bridge back was closed but 1 of the workers said it was fine for us to cross on the pathway, just as we had on the way there. We got part way over and another worker said no go back. So we had to wheel our bikes backwards, back down the bridge. This put us on to a busy road to get to another bridge to cross the river.  The only bit of pathway was on the bridge and it started and finished haphazardly. Of course this route was more undulating and slightly ...

Walked down to the boat ramp before breakfast.  There were 6 giant Barramundi washed up. According to the man at the office it's due to the water being too cold and a weed growing in the water. Such a shame. 1 fish would easily have fed a large family. Cooked pancakes for breakfast.  Interesting morning on the road.  We had a choice, left or right. We went left and missed the power station lookout and caught 2 sets of red lights at road works 🤦‍♀️. Thought we'd have coffee and a wander in Calliope but everything was closed for the Gladstone show holiday.  Oh well, on to get fuel but we took a wrong turn and ended up in a carpark with no easy exit. Mark skilfully did a 10 point turn and off we went again. Only half the diesel fuel bowsers were operating and none on the one we were at. So around the block and onto a different bowser. After all that we had earned a coffee at McCafe. We are staying at the Gladstone showgrounds for 2 nights. True to the day, all the tour...