Alice Springs, The Alice or just plain Alice is the largest town in The Red Centre. It has a population of some 27,000 people, many of them indigenous. We left our lovely camp spot about 9.30am and set off for the last 250km to get to Alice.

Rich and I are both sure we heard a mouse in our motorhome during the night however there was no sign of it in the morning.

Passed by the famous Erldunda Roadhouse around 10.20km. The roadhouse sits at the intersection of the Stuart and Lassiter Highways. The Lassiter Highway is the road to Uluru, the Olgas and Kings Canyon. We’ll be going that way on the way back.

The roadhouse looked like it was having renovations done out the front where the fuel pumps are and we’d heard that diesel was $3.18L there.

We had a short break at Stuart’s Well Roadhouse where the kids loved seeing emus and camels. While there a Sunliner Navian 601 motorhome pulled in and I got chatting to the bloke who owns it. It was only 6 months old and they absolutely love it. I hope they get many years of travelling in their beautiful motorhome.

We arrived in Alice Springs at lunch time and, after taking photos at the town sign, found our way to the Discovery Parks – Alice Springs where we had two powered sites booked. Check-in was made easy by their express check-in for pre-paid bookings. There was a basket on the counter in Reception with envelopes without name on. Everything we needed was in the envelope.

We quickly settled in to our great sites. We each have a gravel area (to park the car & van and motorhome on). Next to that is a concrete slab (for under your awning) and next to that is a grass area. Yep, that’s right, I said grass. It’s even green grass.

This is a large park with lots of facilities. There are multiple amenities blocks, camp kitchens, a swimming pool, jumping pillows, a pump track and we have a playground right next to us. The kids love it! And so does Katie. No red dirt here!

Kate an I spent the afternoon getting rid of the red dirt in our RV’s and washing everything. It was even time to change the sheets! OMG how much red dirt was inside. You should have seen the colour of the water when I mopped the floor!

While Katie and I were being very domestic, Pa took the kids to the pool after they’d had a great time at the Jumping Pillow.

Late in the afternoon we went for a drive into Alice downtown to look for a supermarket. We are all so surprised by Alice. It is nothing like we expected. We all expected it to be a town in the flat red desert. Instead we find it is a large town in amongst stunning rocky hills with the dry river bed of the famous Todd River running through. It’s really very different to what we expected. We found where the Tourist Information Centre is and across the road is Megafauna Central, one the places the children want to visit.

We found a Woolworths, stocked up on supplies and headed back to camp where Katie prepared a delicious pasta bolognese for dinner. We sat under the MH awning and enjoyed our dinner al fresco. It was a happy dinner.

We’ve decided we are going to be tourists tomorrow check out lots of Alice activities.