Day 11-Alice Springs continued

A bit of a sleep in today, no sunrise pictures today (or sunset either, we were having a swim!).
We went out on a tour today to check out some of the West MacDonnell Ranges, we saw quite a lot of beautiful scenery as we trekked around in a freezing cold then excessively hot little van.
The tour was quite good, a friendly guide John (whose shirt was embroidered with Richard! - apparently not his shirt!).
We started the morning at Simpsons a Gap on the lookout for wallabies, unfortunately we were the second tour there for the day and missed seeing the declining wallaby colony (although the Canadian and Hong Kong couple both managed a pic, me thinks because they didn't have as much noise with them-no 7 or 9 year old kids!). Despite this the area was very beautiful.

I noticed on the drives today the totally different landscape, lots of ridges/ranges, many ghost gums and lots of grey green foliage, I now understand the colours of Albert Namatjira artworks.
Second stop was Standley Chasm this was quite stunning and appealed to the kids as they could climb rocks not just look at them.

This majestic area was the site of women's special business

We headed to the ochre pits to see the incredible range of colours on the rock walls, the area is now protected but quite fascinating to see the ways that the earths crust has shifted and distributed these rock formations.

Our lunch stop was at Ormiston Gorge with a choice of a climb to the lookout or a stroll along the flat to the billabong, Lewis wanted to head up, Aimee was over the heat (and quite justified too!) so she wanted to go the billabong, so we went separate ways. I'm not sure what possessed me but I chose the up option with Lewis, poor little poppet (who incidentally is not too keen of heights either) I held his little hand for dear life. I feared that he would slip off the edge, we both had VERY sweaty hands!!! The view (once I had the guts to look up!) was quite beautiful. Meanwhile Brett and Aimee had a lovely shady stroll seeing lizards and fish by the cool water.

Next we headed to Glen Helen to see another gorge and grab a cool drink.

Our last main stop was Ellery Creek Bighole where we had a dip (swimmers were in the bus but the bus driver suggested just getting wet in our clothes as we would be dry by the time we headed back to the bus, he was right!)

Our last stop was at the Alice Springs camel farm, we had considered another ride but decided against it.

Tonight we had a simple cheese plate dinner, two very tired kids after a big day and a swim on the pool.
I'm still feeling like there is much of Alice that we have not seen, we will see what we get done tomorrow.