It’s been too long since our last trip, but “He” started to have doubts about caravanning as he went through the process to get ready to leave today. Those thoughts only lasted for a couple of hours until we cleared the outskirts of Sydney and the passion for caravanning returned. It was great to be back on the road and even better being away from the stress of the Sydney traffic.
By our normal standards, the trip today was relatively short and mostly on freeway conditions. Not being able to gain access to our accommodation until after 2pm, we planned to leave at 10:00am and stop at Sutton Forest for lunch around midday.
We pulled away from the curb as the 10:00am news started on the radio and after a trip around the block to make sure that our car that we had left in the driveway was locked, we started our journey south.
Other than a lot of traffic on the road, our trip to Canberra was uneventful. The traffic was far more than we would normally have expected, and we do not know if this was because of the school holidays or the fact it was a Monday. One thing surprising was that we saw no vehicles with snow skis on the roof which was strange as this is the first week of the NSW school holidays and there is abundant snow, and we were travelling the road from Sydney to the NSW snow fields.
As planned, we stopped at Sutton Forest at our favourite bakery, Heatherbrae Pies, where we enjoyed a couple of pies (steak and kidney (He) and steak and mushroom (She)) and a great cup of coffee. The place was packed, and we struggled to find a parking spot for the caravan having to wait for someone to leave.
We did see rainwater on the windscreen on three occasions during out trip, but we only had to use the windscreen wipers on one occasion. What we did experience for most of the trip was a headwind then a cross wind after we turned off the Hume Highway to head to Canberra. Fuel consumption suffered but it has been worse. We watched another caravan sway from side to side several times with the wind, but our caravan handled the wind in its stride. “He” passed a comment that the stress level would have been high in our previous caravan but not today.
Lake George continues to impress with the water level appearing to be a little lower than the last time we passed. As we passed the lake, “She” did some research work on Google, and we were surprised to learn that the deepest part of the lake is 7 meters with the average around then meter mark. Also very surprising is the level of salinity in the lake which is very high. A comment was read where it said it would be hard to drown on Lake George.
We arrived at our destination at 2:00pm (Alivio Tourist Park) and we were soon on our spot. The caravan was level, and it didn’t take long to setup. “He” managed to have problems with the freshwater inlet which resulted in some wet clothing.
As we did our setup, we met another Adria owner and discussed the Adria brand. We also learnt that there is snow on the ground around Canberra so we might plan a visit on Wednesday.
We had a sparkling water with a hint of pineapple for our afternoon tea and “She” repacked clothes etc that needed to be put away.
We decided to have pizza for our evening meal which we enjoyed at the bistro (The Verandah) in the Alivio Caravan Park. We had a super supreme and the pizza had to rate as one of the best ever.
To say it was cold would be an understatement with the thermometer sitting around the 5 mark but a lot colder with the wind chill. We would later learn that this day was the coldest in Canberra this winter.
After our evening meal we returned to the caravan and started our air conditioning in heat mode. The aircon worked a treat and we set it to warm the caravan very slowly.
We had apple pie for our desert (we purchased it at Heatherbrae), then a liqueur (43 – absolutely great) before settling into for the evening with television before an early night in bed.
We have unlocked our on-board toilet as it is far too cold to go to the amenities block at the tourist park.