Heading North!

Today we were finally starting our West Coast Wander adventure beginning the drive north.  Although we were filled with excitement and nervousness, we also had a tinge of sadness - Mum recently has been experiencing issues with her heart and a cardiac ultrasound yesterday afternoon raised several concerns that needed urgent specialist review. Unfortunately for us that meant that Mum and Dad were unable to accompany us on our first leg to Jurien Bay as planned. 

The Mitchell freeway goes on forever but eventually we got to the end turning onto the new (to us) Indian Ocean Drive that hugs the coast all the way to Cervantes. It was a few hours in the car before we stopped at our first tourist attraction - The Pinnacles.

The Pinnacles Dessert is in the middle of nowhere. A large yellow sandy dessert with pointed limestone structures. These limestone pillars are the result of the sea receding leaving sea shell deposits. Thanks to the coastal winds the surrounding sand is eroded exposing these structures.

Ella wasn't too enamoured by these 'pointless structures' (her own words) and thus spent several minutes complaining about being here!!! That's a teenager for you!!!!

From there we stopped at Lake Thetis for a picnic lunch and to view the stromatolites We couldn't convince either girl to accompany us on the short walk to view these living marine fossils. Must admit though the round crumbly structures we could just see in the murky water were pretty underwhelming!! Time to move on to Jurein Bay where we would be camping for the night.

Once there the tents were quickly set up and the girls were extremely happy to hang out in theirs while Andy and I went for a short exploratory jog.