Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

I think my early rising habit is finally starting to catch up with me. I woke up at 5:30 and had to stall a bit so as to not leave Alice Springs before full light. The drive went pretty quickly, with a stop at Erldunda for gas and at Curtain Springs for lunch. Best burger I've had in Australia. The beet slice was weird, but good.

I passed my second kangaroo crossing warning sign (also seen: camel crossing, jabiru crossing, brolga crossing, airplane crossing) and actually had to honk at a big red kangaroo that was standing around in my lane. It cleared off pretty quickly after the honk.

When I arrived at Yulara, the lodging complex for Uluru (Ayers Rock) , I felt like I needed a nap, but I was only partly successful in actually napping.†In the evening I watched the sun set on Uluru from a distance and listened to a star talk. Some of the southern constellations are now less unfamiliar to me. The means of finding south using the Southern Cross is pretty ridiculous, though. Trace a line along the long axis of the Cross? Find the two pointer stars and trace the line equidistant between them? Where those two cross, drop a altitude? Give me good old Polaris any day. I got to look at Saturn, Antares, and the Moon through telescopes.

So the morning I was leaving Devil's Marbles, I saw the moon and it looked really odd. It had been full or very close at moonrise the night before, but it was a weird crescent and quite orange in the morning. I didn't think a whole lot about it. It turns out that there was an eclipse that I just happened to catch!