Five People in Car for 16 and a Half Hours is NOT Comfortable

On Friday, April 2, I embarked on the trip of a lifetime. After hugging Tyler goodbye for a final time, since he was leaving to back to Karratha while I was gone, four and my friends and I all packed into a tiny car and drove 1422 km.

In one day.

Because I had gone to the Lady Gaga concert, and had gone clubbing after, we were not able to leave until 5 am on Friday morning. We did not arrive at our campsite until 1030 pm.

The time in between? Well, it was an adventure.

Almost as soon as we got out of Perth, we realized that this was not going to be your average American road trip. First of all, there were four Americans who were the ones driving, so we had the whole, other side of the road thing to deal with. Secondly, there is nothing in Western Australia between big cities. I literally mean nothing.

Well, okay. so maybe not nothing. There were a few cows, over 50 dead kangaroos on the side of the road (after 50 we stopped counting), and a petrol station about every 300-500 km. Which means you have to stop for gas at EVERY station you get to, even if you don't think you need it. Because it's quite possible that while you have half a tank or maybe even three quarters left, you might need to drive another 500km before you reach civilization again.

If you can call this civilization:




This was a picture of the first place we stopped at. There was literally nothing there but the petrol station. That was it. The prices were actually fairly reasonable, considering the fact that they could have jacked it even higher since they were our only option. Oh. Also, it kind of looked like the type of petrol station you would find in a horror film. Just saying . . .

The landscape to each side the entire way was dessert and red dirt. A few trees. But that was it. It was kind of refreshing to get out of the city, but after 17 and a half hours stuck in a car with only brief stops, we were excited to get to the camp site.

Our end destination was Karijini National Park. And when we got there, we were exhausted and eager to get out to stretch our legs. But there were bugs everywhere swarming our lights. And we knew that we had to get the tent up as soon as possible.

The only problem was, while we all had experience putting up tents before, this one was massive. And it was pitch black outside due to the lack of civilization and the fact that we were the only ones camping in our vacinity.

But we managed to all work together and got it up pretty quickly. I'd say we were able to all be in the tent with all of our stuff unpacked within an hour.

We all fell right asleep, which was a good thing, considering what was coming the next day.

(Author's note: I made it easier for people to post comments now, so those of you who were having trouble posting them shouldn't have a problem now.)