With possibly one of the hardest sections behind us we awoke with a feeling of being in the home stretch. It was really the first time we had started to think about finishing the hike the rest of the time while we obviously had a finish in mind we were just enjoying our time on the hike. It was a strange change in feeling and it wasn’t that we weren’t enjoying the hike anymore it was just interesting that the focus seemed to have changed.
Also the next few days were going to be a little less picturesque than the last and we had been told by many people that while we were planning to split the next section into two most people found that they did it in one day.
So we set the alarm for an early wake up and had breakfast with an interesting older couple who were our only companions at the campsite and set off with the intention of maybe skipping our next planned camp at Mulga Creek and continuing on to Simpson’s Gap.
We still had some gentle ups and downs to hike through but the paths were much easier to walk on as they were far less rocky and were almost smooth. We kept up a pretty quick pace and soon enough were at Mulga Creek campsite 10km into the day’s hike. We had been warned that the campsite wasn’t the most picturesque and indeed it wasn’t and as we still had plenty of time left in the day we filled up with water and set off again to complete another 16km to get to Simpson’s Gap.
It was a much warmer day and our guess would have been that it would have been about 30 degrees and very dry too but we maintained a bit of a push and kept plodding along down the track. We took turns leading as one of us would get a little tired the other would overtake and keep the momentum going I have to admit that after 15 days of solid hiking it was quite unbelievable to be putting in such an effort.
We were definitely tiring as we were getting closer to our day’s end and it was with weary bodies that we arrived at Simpson’s Gap to find that we had the campground to ourselves. I couldn’t believe that we had done 26km in the one day and once we had set up the tent and filled our water we relaxed and ate our food in the shelter.
It was lovely sitting and chatting just the two of us and we decided that we had pushed enough and that we would complete the hike in two more days and I went off to try and get some reception to book a hotel as a reward for the two nights early that we would finish.
Simpson’s Gap was one of the sites that is accessible by road and as it was only 24 outside of Alice Springs there were quite a few visitors coming to look at the chasm and throughout the evening we had a steady stream of cars coming and going. I probably make it sound like a lot of people whereas it probably wasn’t that many it was just that we weren’t used to it.
We were pretty knackered and went to bed early once again and I have to admit I slept like a log. Sarah though assures me that while I slept on three seperate occasions people drove to the gap with music blaring and went into the chasm where they played their music for a little while before heading off again revving their engines. Like I said I will have to take her word for it as I was out like a light. T