Rock Patrol Tour Day 1 with Groovy Grape Tours

Continuing my adventures with Groovy Grape Tours, I hopped on a bus called Watto (a name known to all Star Wars fans as young Anakin’s boss/slave driver) and set out on the Rock Patrol Tour, which I had already been on two months ago, and was curious what changes in weather and landscape lay ahead of me. Saying goodbye to Adelaide and headed for the Flinders Ranges, we saw quite some changes in the landscape on our way.

**** This post came to be through a Groovy Grape Tour provided free of charge to cover it in blogs posts. I wasn’t paid.****

Suburbia gave way to croplands, which turned into cattle grazing grounds after the Goyder Line and then the Flinders finally came into view. Did you know they are part of a huge formation that stretches all the way to Kangaroo island, rising and sinking along the way?

Opting for the rising part, we set up camp at Wilmington for a lunch break and then turned explorers in Alligator Gorge. By now, everything was much warmer and the stream’s water had evaporated. Thus, we did not have to worry about getting wet feet. Our focus lay on snakes this time.

The weather was rather cloudy as it would remain for most of the trip and we did not find any slithery critters, instead lots of twisted spider webs and the occasional owners of it were spotted in cracks and tree branches. Something else was watching us, too and we saw a euro family high up along the gorge’s walls before it slowly hopped away.

Our walk was not over yet and we did find a little bit of water left in the creek with an armada of tadpoles in them. Soon frog song will be the dominant noise. As it was, the whole walk was quiet and only accompanied by the occasional bird song. In total, the walk did not take long (a good warming up since there would be more and much longer walks to come over the next days) and we soon found ourselves back on top overlooking the green valleys and forests of the Flinders Ranges.

The colours had now shifted from a lush green to a more brown tinted but the sight was still beautiful and we were delighted by the golden crop fields along the way, hiding emus and their families but not too well since we saw them, after all. Back at camp and hungry as wolves, our tour guide served us a stir fry and salad and we happily slept underneath a canopy of stars in our first night in a swag (for them, not for me. I’m already an old cat with that).

I would like to thank Groovy Grape Tours for taking me along on their different tours. However, as always I am staying true to my opinion.

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