gone living

we're in alice springs for a few days. the days are intermittently sunny and beautiful, or overcast with dollops of warm rain coming down in irregular intervals. now that we've entered the northern territory, the beer of choice is Castelmaine XXXX (instead of Coopers in South Australia). Jean and I both became Coopers Pale Ale fans, and we miss seeing it in the pubs up here.

alice is the first "big city" we've been in since we left adelaide -- being able to restock at large supermarkets, find camping supply stores, and get fast internet access has been excellent. after this we'll be back to camping and small towns for the next week or so until we reach Darwin, so we'll be putting our new gear to good use. in addition, being able to find breakfast menu items like pancakes and french toast again (instead of the famous "Toast And ..." breakfasts that have followed us through the otuback) is a major plus.

after spending some time decompressing from our last run of camping, and taking care of necessary things like burning our photos onto DVD, downloading the latest episodes of Lost onto Jean's Video iPod via the iTunes Store, getting additional camping supplies (it never hurts to actually have mantels for your propane lamp), and so forth.

after another day or two here of seeing the sights, we'll proceed either south or north to start doing some more camping, and begin slowly making our way north to Darwin.