Day 23: Slightly off the beaten track

Odo: 16881, Day's KM: 477.8, Trip KM: 5899

Calen to Yeppoon

In an attempt to make this stretch of the journey more enjoyable, without spending way too much time heading inland in search of different roads, we decided to turn off at Sarina, just past Mackay, and head along the Sarina-Marlborough road instead.  We did have a brief shower when we stopped for fuel, but it disappeared pretty quickly.

The start of the road was most enjoyable.  We came across a climb up the mountain range heading inland that was very twisty and a much needed break from the monotony of all of the highway riding we had been doing.  After the range, we then had a whole lot of straight road in front of us again, but fortunately there were no roadworks to speak of.  We were able to sit on 100km/h for ages, probably averaging 90-95 on the stretch from the range to Lotus Creek - our second stop of the day.

Despite appearances, the Lotus Creek store / service station is actually operational.

Shortly after leaving Lotus Creek, we turned off the Sarina-Marlborough road and on to the St Lawrence-Croydon road. This road was almost all dirt, and to start with, was quite slippery because of an abundance of loose gravel. Needless to say it wasn't long before we stopped to let air out of our tyres.

Along the way we came across some interesting sections of road.  One I would have loved to have captured on camera but it was not practical to do so due to the terrain.  It was the only section of bitumen on the road and it was so steep that despite being in the middle of nowhere, it had emergency runoff areas on the descent.  The view of the surrounding landscape was absolutely awesome.

Further along the road there were lots of cows free grazing beside the road (and in a few spots, depositing their number two's right in the middle of it).  We even had a couple of "water crossings" (read puddle crossings).  Perfect opportunity for some photos then.

You'll note I do the same stretch of road in both directions.  I actually crossed that "puddle" 5 times in an attempt to get a good photo, getting progressively faster each time.  The photos have come out pretty well, but I would be interested to see if in a hypothetical later photo shoot whether we can improve the photo by changing the shutter speed and hence how blurred the spray is.

When we got back to the highway, we had to reinflate our tyres prior to running on the highway.  In my case, 15psi front and 25psi back is not quite up to the task (the bike recommends 36/42 psi split front to rear for a rider with gear).  Unlike on the trip Tim and I did in Tassie, I have a compressor on tyre inflation duties, rather than a hand pump like last time.  I do have a hand pump as backup which I hope never to have to use again.

The little pump did its job well, leaving us both with fully inflated tyres within a few minutes.

The rest of the run was fairly standard highway fare with a number of roadworks sections.  We ended up heading into Yeppoon for the evening and got our tents out for the first time in a while, and had a fairly relaxing evening around the camp kitchen of the site.