4-Wheeling North of Alice Springs.
These photos were taken during a noon-time drive starting about five miles north of Alice Springs.
Here we are (Dave and me) driving off-road right next to Stuart Highway. That's the bridge you see in the left of the shot.
This is Wigley's Water Hole. We happened to stumble upon this as we were aimlessly driving the dirt roads north of Alice.
We saw the sign, stopped, looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders in unison, and asked why not. So here we ended up.
I learned recently that it had just rained in May here, which is why there seems to be water everywhere here in the desert.
Here's a little lizard we found scurrying around in the brush. He's kind of hard to see, but he's just above the rock, almost dead center of the picture.
And this is Wigley's Gorge. In the summer here the rains come and flood the gorge, adding to the water hole.
Here's Dave goofing off, again...
And a shot of some rocks we found near the dry stream bed.
One thing I've noticed a lot around here - there always seems to be just a single tree on top of many of the hills.
Watch for this theme in later galleries.
Here's a shot looking from the top of the gorge out towards the cattle fields with some water in the distance.
Here's another angle from on top of the gorge.
We were pretty startled when we heard this guy scampering around, but relieved when it turned out to be only a wallaby.
Check out the rock above and to the right of the wallaby - it kind of looks like a smiling lizard head. And just in case you couldn't tell, that wallaby is perched on a small ledge about 200 feet above the valley below.
We saw this bright little guy sunning on a rock in the bottom of the gorge.
There was another just as brilliant only blue, but he wouldn't land for a picture.
The rest of these shots are of my awesome 4-wheeling skills. Well, okay, maybe my skills are accentuated just a bit from the incredible raw off-road power of this brand new Nissan X-Trail! POWER! Seth, your car's got nothing on this!
Yeah, we barely escaped this adventure with our lives... The adrenaline that day!