In the morning we woke up and wandered among the Marbles yet again, ate our classic muesli, and continued on our way to Alice Springs. Now, the day before, on our way to Tennant Creek and the Devil's Marbles, my lower back had started locking up and giving me a bit of trouble. Well, at our first rest stop after leaving the Devil's Marbles, my back locked up to where I had to bend and twist in order to be able to walk. Talk about pain! I went to use the bathroom and had a bit of trouble standing back up, but I made it! Marcus and I walked around the rest stop just a bit, then we both decided it would be best for me to lay down in the back of the camper van to let my back rest. Little did we know that I'd be traveling back there for the remainder of the trip! Oy...well, we got to Alice Springs (with my sad Marcus driving up there all alone) and I got out of the car and walked around successfully up at the top of Anzac Hill (a town look-out and a WWII memorial). We headed into town to replenish our water supply and to wander around Alice Springs a bit. Well, I had a hell of a time getting out of the car, but I managed it with some of the most intense pain I've ever felt, and eventually walked over to a bakery where I felt myself go to the brink of collapse. Crap! (Well, you can insert a more colorful expletive there because there were plenty forthcoming.) I sat down outside the bakery and Marcus asked two friendly German ladies next to us if they could tell us where the pharmacy was, because boy were painkillers in order! They told Marcus where the pharmacy was and also where a close-by natural medicine clinic was that did massage therapy, acupuncture, etc. I sat and tried not to sink into despair while Marcus went and got painkillers and brought the van to where I was sitting. I hobbled into the car with his help and we headed off to find the clinic. I again wobbled my way in, walking with my hands on my knees with my butt up in the air, up to reception. With tears in my eyes I asked the receptionist if I could see someone about my back because I couldn't really walk. She checked the schedule, called a few patients (who all confirmed their appointments) and she looked at me, shook her head, and said there wasn't anything they could do. I immediately started bawling and looked at Marcus and asked what we were supposed to do. The receptionist, with her common sense of humanity creeping in, went to talk to the chiropractor. She came out, gave me a few forms and told me to come back at 6:00 pm later that night. Good woman, thank you! We took the forms and made our way back out to the car. (Well, Marcus did, then he drove it over to me and helped push my butt inside.) :) We decided to go to a movie to use up the time until the appointment. I walked inside the theater successfully, all by myself, while Marcus went to park the van. I bought the tickets and then sat down (big mistake), waiting for Marcus to come back. Ten minutes later, he came in and bought some movie snackies and I started to get up to go with him into the theater. I stood up and started walking painfully over to him and in the middle of the walkway, something pinched and I dropped to the floor on my hands and knees. Marcus helped me back up while the theater staff looked on silently, and I tearfully made my way into the theater. Sitting through the movie wasn't comfortable, but I shifted and made do. (By the way, Rock the Boat or whatever that movie is called wasn't very amazing, though in our case it did help us wile away the time.) After the movie we again hobbled out to the car, slowly but surely, and went to see the chiropractor. They asked us to pay the $50 up front, so I asked Marcus to get out my purse. Which wasn't in the backpack like I'd thought it was. [Insert more expletives here.] Seriously?! More tears. Somewhere between my collapse in the theater and getting up from our seats, I must have set my purse down somewhere. And then it was taken by whomever was the lucky finder, stupid @$#. There were three people in our theater with us, and then there was the theater staff and somewhere therein now lies my little purse. At least there wasn't much money in it, and I canceled my bank card right away so they didn't get any more money there. It also had my US driver's license in there, so I'll have to order a new one, and my phone was in there (battery dead and it's pre-pay and all of my credit was expired), as well as my house keys. But all in all, it could have been a lot worse--I still have my passport!
While Marcus went back to the movie theater, I was beckoned into the office by the chiropractor, and I did my version of walking into the room. It turns out this chiropractor, in the middle of desert Australia, is from British Columbia and used to spend his summers in Spokane, trying to catch the golden ring on the carousel and going toy shopping at White Elephant. How small the world feels when I'm in outback Australia talking to somebody about the White Elephant in Spokane! It certainly made me feel better after such a long day... After some stretching of the hip flexor and some twisting, turning and cracking, I was able to walk out of the office. Marcus and I (rather, Marcus since all I did was lay in the back of the campervan) went hotel searching, since it was advisable for me to sleep in a real bed that night instead of some stiff foam in the back of a van. We found a hotel, did some bargaining, and settled down for the evening watching footy and a rom-com movie on cable. (For dinner? The complimentary tea biscuits in our room.)
The next day we slept in a bit then made our way out to the van to make the drive to Uluru. Marcus the trooper was dreading the driving, especially since there's not much conversing to be had between the driver's seat and the back of the campervan while rattling down the road at 140 kilometers per hour. We tried doing crossword, but it was too frustrating to hear the other person and we quickly gave up on that idea. Five hours, a few emus and camels and paying $1.75 per liter of gas later, we arrived at the closest camping spot for Uluru, where we had to pay $35 merely to park the camper van. To park a damn van, we had to pay that much! That was for a site without water and electricity, too! I get so angry with people charging such ridiculous amounts and clearly taking advantage of their proximity to a national heritage site! But there was no more driving to be done, and we wanted to be as close as possible so we could do as little driving as we could the following day. Anyway, we got there fairly early and spent the rest of the day reading, relaxing, and snuggling (which the overcast weather allowed!). We made omelets for dinner that night with chorizo, olives, red pepper and LOTS of cheese...by far the best meal we ate out of that campervan. Then, as per usual when there's not much to do after sun-down, we went to sleep early.
The next morning we rose early and made our way out to Uluru (paying $25 per person just to freakin' get in). The rock was quite beautiful, though.
I was able to do a few walks, though I definitely was not up to the 9 kilometer walk all the way around the rock. We drove around, stopping at a few different places, walking around, admiring the rock from all angles, and debating on whether or not we would hike up it if both my back and the weather permitted it. The Aboriginals ask people to not climb it. It's a sacred site and they use it for very specific ceremonies, and as they are the Native Title owners, you'd think they'd be able to choose whether or not people could hike up, right? Wrong. They can politely ask people not to climb it in various publications and on the signs, but it's just a request. Apparently the Australian Government's lease allows for people to hike it, so people can technically still hike it if they want to. Doesn't seem right to me, but in the end it didn't really matter in our case.
We stopped at the cultural center before we left. We went in through the exit (they have it all blocked off and snaked around and specifically try to get you to enter one way and leave another) and that was probably a mistake because it left me appalled and unable to appreciate the "cultural" part of the center. The first thing we saw was the souvenir shop, which is usually all fine and dandy to me because I love a good souvenir! Well, everything in the store was at least 50% more expensive than it was in any of the other shops we had gone to, just because it was actually at Uluru. We were in the middle of Kakadu and things were cheaper! We quickly left that part of the center and walked into the gallery part. Again, I love a good gallery, and Aboriginal art is very beautiful and quite prominent from this area so I was more than happy to see what was on display in this particular center. Again, prices exorbitant--$35 for a bean bracelet, $45 for miniature painted "bowls". I'm guessing that the gallery paid the artists a tiny fraction of that price for these treasures. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that the girl working behind the counter earns more than any of the artists whose work is for sale on the other side of that counter. I wandered slowly around the room looking at the beautifully overpriced artwork on the walls filling up with disgust. I turned past the table in the middle of the room and I hit my peak--there on the floor were sitting two female artists plunking away with paintbrushes onto canvas on the floor. Now there's a tourist attraction. People stopped to watch as though they were street musicians, though nobody dared speak with the artists. It was as if the gallery paid some abysmally low wage for sitting there in that corner and "entertaining the tourists". I despised what I saw, so I left the room and get some fresh air. The rest of the cultural center was a bit ruined after that, so we hurried our way through and finished up our time at Uluru.
After leaving, we stopped to basically get robbed from the gas station and we moved forward on our scheme to sell our Uluru tickets (which were valid for three days) to another couple--and we did! We ended up selling them to an Australian lady and her American friend who was visiting from Kent. Did the world shrink another size? I think it did. :) Then there was another five hour drive over to King's Canyon, during which time we tried doing more crossword puzzles and I read Marcus the news from Coober Pedy, a small, underground mining town even further into the bush. The front page news consisted of a local couple that got married in Hawaii (complete with pictures from the bachelor party at Hooter's--classy). On some random inside page, there was a small article about someone who died from drowning in the community pool. It seems like those two stories should switch places...oh yeah, and then there was the real estate section, complete with a semi-underground house. It could be fun to own a house like that. :) Anyhew, the newspaper exchange lasted a short while and then we were back to our own separate parts of the van.
Fast forward to King's Canyon. I managed to do a two kilometer hike in which was nice.
Apart from the flies. 
That wasn't even a moment when I would say his back was covered with flies. I spent most of the time walking with one of my hands in front of my face moving like a windshield wiper. Nyech.
After our little hike, we decided to drive down to the next park turn off that said no camping, but we figured we weren't really camping and it was so far out nobody would really patrol it so we laid in the back of the van and watched the sky darken. Weeeeell, turns out they do patrol that lot and we got kicked out and told to move it on to one of the pay-campsites. So we drove down to the closest site and with the offices closed, we drove on through and parked. Now, I'm sure every single person reading this has at one time roasted hotdogs and marshmallows on a campfire. But my dear Marcus has never had the experience, so in the hopes of finding a firepit, we bought some hotdogs. However, we didn't find a firepit. Australians have full-on barbecues at campsites but not firepits. So with a lack of firepits, we decided to boil our hotdogs which (aside from eating them) was the worst idea. The hotdogs were unnatural--so unnatural, in fact, that it turned the water pink. And then we actually ate one! That was definitely the worst dinner of the trip!
And after having paid stupid amounts of money to merely park the camper van, we made an early escape from the campsite without paying. Will we have bad karma for that? I think because we ended up paying so much to park the frickin' campervan during our trip for services we hardly used, we deserved at least one freebie. Anyway, that's how I will justify it to myself, knowing that I did something wrong because others wronged me. That's usually not how I try to resolve a situation...mmm, well, that's not true, either...eye for an eye, trying to balance the scale and all that jazz...I'll balance your scale...and I digress...
We left that morning and Marcus finished the last driving leg of our trip. We dropped off the campervan and luckily they didn't keep any of the $2,700 deposit we had to pay when we rented it. Then we walked/hobbled back to the center of town and did gift shopping and we each found an Aboriginal painting we wanted. Now we just have to get them framed...
For dinner we were still looking forward to steak and a hamburger, and there in Alice Springs it was within our grasp. We went to a local pub that looked like the Australian, cowboyish version of Applebee's with memorabilia and stuffed animals decorating the walls. Then we went to a restaurant and alas! no hamburger!!! Grrr...Marcus got a steak but it was pretty gross and I ended up with squishily weird potato gnocchi that were supposed to have some "bush" flavor but was just unappetizing. So we went upstairs and ate more easter candy.
The next day we wandered amidst a Sunday market, then began what was to be an excruciatingly long way home. My back wasn't in a condition to do much sitting, so I was not looking forward to the two flights home, with a stop over in Melbourne. During the first flight I tried to last as long as possible because they were playing "Yes Man" as the in-flight movie. But about 10 minutes before the end, I couldn't take it anymore and I got up and sprawled out on the three seats that were (thankfully!) empty behind us. Then there was more sitting until we landed at which point I stood straight up. On the next flight I asked one of the flight attendants for a pillow and she must have thought I was just being some difficult customer who was going to put her seat down and try to sleep before we even took off. She said she couldn't get me one until we were up in the air. Then when she saw me squirming in my seat with a rolled up sweatshirt sticking out between me and my seat, she finally gave me one in a semi-apologetic tone. Well that's nice...
We got to Sydney and nobody could pick us up so we hailed a cab and headed home...where we realized that we didn't have our keys. Shit. It was raining and there we were, sitting right in front of our house during a long trip and we couldn't get in. So....close... so with what remained of Marcus's cell phone battery (which wasn't much) we called our roommate Bec only to discover that she was at her brother's place having a family dinner with her parents who were visiting from Spain. Hmm, not going to interrupt that dinner. Turns out our other roommate was with her. Double shit! We thought that maybe our friends Shan and Seam who live about 10 minutes' walk away from us might have a key to our house. No. No key. And they were also having dinner with the parents so we couldn't wait there, either. At that point, I broke. I was already a little gloomy over the prospect of job searching yet again over the coming weeks, a reality that didn't become a reality until I saw Sydney's skyline from the plane window. I also had to recuperate the losses of my purse. And my back was in pain and I just wanted to lay down with a big bag of ice. But no, there we were outside our house, not knowing when we'd be able to get inside. The tears came. Marcus tried to comfort me and told me to keep some of my "desert happy" with me. Well, okay, desert happy is better than cloudy gloom, so I chinned up.
We headed to the closest pub to sit our butts down (more ouch!) to wait for Bec and Kelli to get home from dinner. Then Shan messaged to say she'd drop off their car so we could drive over to Bec's brother's house. Yay! And then Marcus's phone died....so he left me with all of our luggage to walk up to Shan and Seam's house. Then it started raining even harder...
Marcus finally came back about 45 minutes later, though it should only have taken him 20 minutes. He was wet and scowling and his "desert happy" had obviously fled. We drove to his office in the city, hoping that his keys might be there. No luck. Next we made the drive to Bec's brother's house and I couldn't sit in the car for any longer so we both went inside to pick up the keys. We heard squeals of laughter upon entering the apartment and found a happy group of six playing Wii and having a delightful time. They turned around and the focus of the six was upon us, asking how our trip was, how we lost our keys and...my tears returned. I swear, once the flood gates have opened, they stay open! I pretty much cried for the rest of the night and I was so embarassed to be crying in front of our roommate's family. I couldn't help it, I literally do not have the power to stay the tears when they come! So I apologized my way out of the apartment after a handful of sobs and they sent us on our way with cookies and some of their dinner. Good people!
When we finally got home, I collapsed on the couch on top of an ice pack and only moved to go to bed. I don't think it could have been a longer day.
That pretty much sums up our trip! My three favorite signs along the way:
While Marcus went back to the movie theater, I was beckoned into the office by the chiropractor, and I did my version of walking into the room. It turns out this chiropractor, in the middle of desert Australia, is from British Columbia and used to spend his summers in Spokane, trying to catch the golden ring on the carousel and going toy shopping at White Elephant. How small the world feels when I'm in outback Australia talking to somebody about the White Elephant in Spokane! It certainly made me feel better after such a long day... After some stretching of the hip flexor and some twisting, turning and cracking, I was able to walk out of the office. Marcus and I (rather, Marcus since all I did was lay in the back of the campervan) went hotel searching, since it was advisable for me to sleep in a real bed that night instead of some stiff foam in the back of a van. We found a hotel, did some bargaining, and settled down for the evening watching footy and a rom-com movie on cable. (For dinner? The complimentary tea biscuits in our room.)
The next day we slept in a bit then made our way out to the van to make the drive to Uluru. Marcus the trooper was dreading the driving, especially since there's not much conversing to be had between the driver's seat and the back of the campervan while rattling down the road at 140 kilometers per hour. We tried doing crossword, but it was too frustrating to hear the other person and we quickly gave up on that idea. Five hours, a few emus and camels and paying $1.75 per liter of gas later, we arrived at the closest camping spot for Uluru, where we had to pay $35 merely to park the camper van. To park a damn van, we had to pay that much! That was for a site without water and electricity, too! I get so angry with people charging such ridiculous amounts and clearly taking advantage of their proximity to a national heritage site! But there was no more driving to be done, and we wanted to be as close as possible so we could do as little driving as we could the following day. Anyway, we got there fairly early and spent the rest of the day reading, relaxing, and snuggling (which the overcast weather allowed!). We made omelets for dinner that night with chorizo, olives, red pepper and LOTS of cheese...by far the best meal we ate out of that campervan. Then, as per usual when there's not much to do after sun-down, we went to sleep early.
The next morning we rose early and made our way out to Uluru (paying $25 per person just to freakin' get in). The rock was quite beautiful, though.
I was able to do a few walks, though I definitely was not up to the 9 kilometer walk all the way around the rock. We drove around, stopping at a few different places, walking around, admiring the rock from all angles, and debating on whether or not we would hike up it if both my back and the weather permitted it. The Aboriginals ask people to not climb it. It's a sacred site and they use it for very specific ceremonies, and as they are the Native Title owners, you'd think they'd be able to choose whether or not people could hike up, right? Wrong. They can politely ask people not to climb it in various publications and on the signs, but it's just a request. Apparently the Australian Government's lease allows for people to hike it, so people can technically still hike it if they want to. Doesn't seem right to me, but in the end it didn't really matter in our case.We stopped at the cultural center before we left. We went in through the exit (they have it all blocked off and snaked around and specifically try to get you to enter one way and leave another) and that was probably a mistake because it left me appalled and unable to appreciate the "cultural" part of the center. The first thing we saw was the souvenir shop, which is usually all fine and dandy to me because I love a good souvenir! Well, everything in the store was at least 50% more expensive than it was in any of the other shops we had gone to, just because it was actually at Uluru. We were in the middle of Kakadu and things were cheaper! We quickly left that part of the center and walked into the gallery part. Again, I love a good gallery, and Aboriginal art is very beautiful and quite prominent from this area so I was more than happy to see what was on display in this particular center. Again, prices exorbitant--$35 for a bean bracelet, $45 for miniature painted "bowls". I'm guessing that the gallery paid the artists a tiny fraction of that price for these treasures. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that the girl working behind the counter earns more than any of the artists whose work is for sale on the other side of that counter. I wandered slowly around the room looking at the beautifully overpriced artwork on the walls filling up with disgust. I turned past the table in the middle of the room and I hit my peak--there on the floor were sitting two female artists plunking away with paintbrushes onto canvas on the floor. Now there's a tourist attraction. People stopped to watch as though they were street musicians, though nobody dared speak with the artists. It was as if the gallery paid some abysmally low wage for sitting there in that corner and "entertaining the tourists". I despised what I saw, so I left the room and get some fresh air. The rest of the cultural center was a bit ruined after that, so we hurried our way through and finished up our time at Uluru.
After leaving, we stopped to basically get robbed from the gas station and we moved forward on our scheme to sell our Uluru tickets (which were valid for three days) to another couple--and we did! We ended up selling them to an Australian lady and her American friend who was visiting from Kent. Did the world shrink another size? I think it did. :) Then there was another five hour drive over to King's Canyon, during which time we tried doing more crossword puzzles and I read Marcus the news from Coober Pedy, a small, underground mining town even further into the bush. The front page news consisted of a local couple that got married in Hawaii (complete with pictures from the bachelor party at Hooter's--classy). On some random inside page, there was a small article about someone who died from drowning in the community pool. It seems like those two stories should switch places...oh yeah, and then there was the real estate section, complete with a semi-underground house. It could be fun to own a house like that. :) Anyhew, the newspaper exchange lasted a short while and then we were back to our own separate parts of the van.Fast forward to King's Canyon. I managed to do a two kilometer hike in which was nice.
Apart from the flies. That wasn't even a moment when I would say his back was covered with flies. I spent most of the time walking with one of my hands in front of my face moving like a windshield wiper. Nyech.After our little hike, we decided to drive down to the next park turn off that said no camping, but we figured we weren't really camping and it was so far out nobody would really patrol it so we laid in the back of the van and watched the sky darken. Weeeeell, turns out they do patrol that lot and we got kicked out and told to move it on to one of the pay-campsites. So we drove down to the closest site and with the offices closed, we drove on through and parked. Now, I'm sure every single person reading this has at one time roasted hotdogs and marshmallows on a campfire. But my dear Marcus has never had the experience, so in the hopes of finding a firepit, we bought some hotdogs. However, we didn't find a firepit. Australians have full-on barbecues at campsites but not firepits. So with a lack of firepits, we decided to boil our hotdogs which (aside from eating them) was the worst idea. The hotdogs were unnatural--so unnatural, in fact, that it turned the water pink. And then we actually ate one! That was definitely the worst dinner of the trip!
And after having paid stupid amounts of money to merely park the camper van, we made an early escape from the campsite without paying. Will we have bad karma for that? I think because we ended up paying so much to park the frickin' campervan during our trip for services we hardly used, we deserved at least one freebie. Anyway, that's how I will justify it to myself, knowing that I did something wrong because others wronged me. That's usually not how I try to resolve a situation...mmm, well, that's not true, either...eye for an eye, trying to balance the scale and all that jazz...I'll balance your scale...and I digress...
We left that morning and Marcus finished the last driving leg of our trip. We dropped off the campervan and luckily they didn't keep any of the $2,700 deposit we had to pay when we rented it. Then we walked/hobbled back to the center of town and did gift shopping and we each found an Aboriginal painting we wanted. Now we just have to get them framed...
For dinner we were still looking forward to steak and a hamburger, and there in Alice Springs it was within our grasp. We went to a local pub that looked like the Australian, cowboyish version of Applebee's with memorabilia and stuffed animals decorating the walls. Then we went to a restaurant and alas! no hamburger!!! Grrr...Marcus got a steak but it was pretty gross and I ended up with squishily weird potato gnocchi that were supposed to have some "bush" flavor but was just unappetizing. So we went upstairs and ate more easter candy.
The next day we wandered amidst a Sunday market, then began what was to be an excruciatingly long way home. My back wasn't in a condition to do much sitting, so I was not looking forward to the two flights home, with a stop over in Melbourne. During the first flight I tried to last as long as possible because they were playing "Yes Man" as the in-flight movie. But about 10 minutes before the end, I couldn't take it anymore and I got up and sprawled out on the three seats that were (thankfully!) empty behind us. Then there was more sitting until we landed at which point I stood straight up. On the next flight I asked one of the flight attendants for a pillow and she must have thought I was just being some difficult customer who was going to put her seat down and try to sleep before we even took off. She said she couldn't get me one until we were up in the air. Then when she saw me squirming in my seat with a rolled up sweatshirt sticking out between me and my seat, she finally gave me one in a semi-apologetic tone. Well that's nice...
We got to Sydney and nobody could pick us up so we hailed a cab and headed home...where we realized that we didn't have our keys. Shit. It was raining and there we were, sitting right in front of our house during a long trip and we couldn't get in. So....close... so with what remained of Marcus's cell phone battery (which wasn't much) we called our roommate Bec only to discover that she was at her brother's place having a family dinner with her parents who were visiting from Spain. Hmm, not going to interrupt that dinner. Turns out our other roommate was with her. Double shit! We thought that maybe our friends Shan and Seam who live about 10 minutes' walk away from us might have a key to our house. No. No key. And they were also having dinner with the parents so we couldn't wait there, either. At that point, I broke. I was already a little gloomy over the prospect of job searching yet again over the coming weeks, a reality that didn't become a reality until I saw Sydney's skyline from the plane window. I also had to recuperate the losses of my purse. And my back was in pain and I just wanted to lay down with a big bag of ice. But no, there we were outside our house, not knowing when we'd be able to get inside. The tears came. Marcus tried to comfort me and told me to keep some of my "desert happy" with me. Well, okay, desert happy is better than cloudy gloom, so I chinned up.
We headed to the closest pub to sit our butts down (more ouch!) to wait for Bec and Kelli to get home from dinner. Then Shan messaged to say she'd drop off their car so we could drive over to Bec's brother's house. Yay! And then Marcus's phone died....so he left me with all of our luggage to walk up to Shan and Seam's house. Then it started raining even harder...
Marcus finally came back about 45 minutes later, though it should only have taken him 20 minutes. He was wet and scowling and his "desert happy" had obviously fled. We drove to his office in the city, hoping that his keys might be there. No luck. Next we made the drive to Bec's brother's house and I couldn't sit in the car for any longer so we both went inside to pick up the keys. We heard squeals of laughter upon entering the apartment and found a happy group of six playing Wii and having a delightful time. They turned around and the focus of the six was upon us, asking how our trip was, how we lost our keys and...my tears returned. I swear, once the flood gates have opened, they stay open! I pretty much cried for the rest of the night and I was so embarassed to be crying in front of our roommate's family. I couldn't help it, I literally do not have the power to stay the tears when they come! So I apologized my way out of the apartment after a handful of sobs and they sent us on our way with cookies and some of their dinner. Good people!
When we finally got home, I collapsed on the couch on top of an ice pack and only moved to go to bed. I don't think it could have been a longer day.
That pretty much sums up our trip! My three favorite signs along the way:
- Please arrive alive!
- We like our lizards frilled not fried (there were these little frilled lizards that looked like that spitting dinosaur from Jurassic Park, and apparently people like to eat them)
- Golf course (this sitting in front of a scorched hill of yellow grass and bush)
Here's a sample of what we listened to for hours upon hours in the car. There are my personal classics like Jason Mraz, The Last Kiss Soundtrack, DMB, Coldplay, Live, Wallflowers, Joshua Radin, Norah Jones, etc. Then there were my stranger songs that exist in my musical collection: Salt 'n Peppa, NKOTB, Aretha Franklin, Spice Girls, Whitney Houston, Enrique Iglesias and a variety of music picked up in South America. There were some like Van Morrison, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ru Paul and Elton John that we chose from Bec's collection. And then...then there were some really random ones. I copied all of A-C from Bec's iTunes, only partly realizing how much of that had come from her dad's iPod. We had some BeeGees (I never realized how 70's they were!) and some random Les Miserables managed to make it on. Then some operatic songs would come on, then some "cinema tunes", some Barbra Streisand, then some Enya (okay, okay, I added those ones!), then we looked at each other in amazement when a duet was sung by Tracy Chapman and Pavarotti. Some people pride themselves on their music collections being eclectic, but I've never heard one that rivals this iPod. 
This is Tina signing off from roadtrip blogging.
Comments
Did you do the acupuncture thing in that town when you were pointed to it?