Half-lap Day 83: Exmouth

It rained for a lot of the night, not heavy but quite persistent. Our temporary job of fixing the leak seemed to do all right, we didn’t end up with a puddle inside the tent, although there was still water coming through and running down the outside where we’d directed it (a trickle, not a flow).

I was up early and went down to the camp kitchen to catch up on the blog and organise my photos. Having been away from internet access for most of the past week, and being out of power for half of that time, there was quite a lot to catch up on and I had a lovely relaxing morning playing on the computer. The kids came and saw me and then brought me some breakfast, and they wandered around the park a bit more and I met them at the tent mid-morning.

Tony was cooking pancakes which were very yummy, and the kids had found a maths code/puzzle book in my activities tub – they’d always found this book a bit hard, today they were working at it together and between the 3 of them they were figuring out the puzzles. They played with it for hours.

It rained for a good part of the morning then, while it stayed cloudy, the rain stopped. For the rest of the day it sprinkled occasionally but was mainly overcast, dull, cold and a little windy. I did some washing and put it on the line – some of it got dry fairly quickly.

I went out to see if I could find out what to do about the leak in the tent, and do a few other messages. I was able to buy a heavy duty patch, although we’re not sure if it will work because it will need to be over a seam. I organised for us to get new tyres (desparately needed) when we come back through Exmouth on Thursday. I got some information on some tours we might want to do, and discovered that there is nowhere in Exmouth to buy a child booster seat. Millie’s has been damaged so we really need a new one – it will do the job until we can get to Carnarvon.

Back at the tent we had a relaxing afternoon. I tidied a few things up and the kids played on their iPads and did more of the puzzle book and played with the magnetic shapes. Tony went for a bike ride to buy some more reef shoes, another replacement for our toast mesh on the stove (this one only lasted a few weeks) and to get groceries. I spent a bit more time on the computer, and went up to reception to book us on a Glasss-Bottomed boat tour for later in the week. We had a closer look at the leak in the tent and Tony sewed parts of it back together, hoping that we’ve sealed the gap well enough.

The kids wandered around the park some more and discovered that the pool wasn’t too cold, so they went for a swim. It was colder than they had expected so they didn’t stay in long, only about 10 minutes, but they did enjoy it. I read my book and watched them, while Tony cooked Butter Chicken, then they all went and had hot showers. We ate our dinner and it was soon dark.

Today was the coldest day we’ve experienced for months – I think it was around 19 degrees, and rather damp. We had hot chocolates and marshmallows after tea. The kids wanted hot water bottles to make going to bed a bit more cosy, so we all went down to the camp kitchen and did the dishes and filled the hot water bottles. Back to bed and read Inheritance for a little while then went to sleep.