Got organized early as planned and on the road soon after 8:00. I wasn't looking forward to it, but once going it was clear the god of riding was with us. It was overcast, a little cool and the wind was behind us. Not directly, but from our left. It was a generous wind too. 80kms were down by 12:00. In terms of what had been accomplished to date, it was a long way in a short time. 

We pulled into the rest stop by the Finke River. I would have liked to keep going, but others wanted food. I thought we had been surfing a front and wanted to stay on it. Don't know if that is possible. It was comforting that there were only a touch over 30kms to our destination for the day.

We recommenced at about 12:40. Not sure why, but to me it felt like someone had thrown out an anchor. My legs felt strong enough, butmy bike felt heavy. Despite this the 30kms were steadily covered and Stuart's well was reached around 3:00.

The latter maybe half of the ride was through what appeared to be a low range. The landscape had changed again. Stuart's Well is in that range. Don't know what it means for tomorrow's ride into Alice Springs.

Pierre and Vero only want to spend one day in Alice; that is, two nights.

Sometime tomorrow we will have ridden half of the way to Darwin.

Bougainvillea seems to flourish in these parts. Everywhere we have stopped it is growing and it is in full bloom at this time of the year. Spectacular.

The weather continues to be mild day and night. No hint so far of winter chills. Been that way since leaving Pt Augusta.

• 

...go to day 18 - May 27

P.S. This is camel country. We have seen more camels today than we have seen of any type of animal for the entire trip. Next door to the Stuart's Well roadhouse is a camel farm where tourists can ride camels.

The roadhouse is run by Spud Murphy. Spud's father was also Spud and they built and ran Pimba's Spud's Roadhouse back in the 1960s.