57km. 15km east of Hann Crossing. Beer Count 4. New feature of the blog. How many times so far in this trip a 4wd has stopped me in the middle of the road and offered me a cold beer. I always thank them and decline, because beer gives me a headache when I am dehydrated, and out here I am always to some degree dehydrated.
I got up early because I wanted to try and access the mobile service at the rangers to see if it was working properly. I rode back a km in what was a dew laden cool morning, and tried again. I tried sending an email, and got an email, but I couldn’t get anything else to work. I rode 10km up the road to find a place to cook breakfast. I stopped at a campsite that didn’t look like anyone had used it the night before. I was running low on water any knew I would have to pull some water out of somewhere. So I took the 1 km detour to Catfish waterhole, but it looked much to dangerous to haul water out of, it looked like croc heaven. I continued northward, stopped 10km further on near a turnoff to the Mick Fienn campsites. I got my chair out under the tree and had morning tea. I was just thinking about getting moving when a 4wd came out of the campsite road and stopped, and asked me if I wanted any water. He kindly gave me 3 bottles of cold water, but more importantly told me there was water and cold showers at Kalpowar campsite about 13 km north of me, 3km off the track. So I headed there. About 5km north a 4wd tour bus stopped passing me and gave me 3 more bottles of water. I headed to Kalpowar, took the 3km very corrugated detour. I had a wonderful cold shower, lunch , and filtered 8l of water to boost my supplies. Then I headed back to the main road, did another 15km, before finding a dried out waterhole to camp in.
