The car tried to be amusing, the GPS turned into an idiot and there once was a lot of love for Lenny Henry in Coonabarabran...
Remember the country themed bus parked outside the Tamworth hotel we stayed in on Day 2? I suspect it was this busload of rodeo clowns that had an early start to the day (around 4am ish) and decided to share that with everyone in the hotel surrounds by chatting as loudly as humanly possible. We get it, you're going somewhere, shut up about it already.
While my wife checked us out, the Wagon decided it was its time to play the clown, by flashing up the transmission light! When this happens you go into limp mode which means acceleration drops to a crawl to stop you from overloading the automatic.
Given how slow we were going already due to the mechanical gremlins on board, this really wasn't much of a difference but I wasn't amused and whispered threats of fire if it didn't get its shit together. Checking the fluid levels after breakfast it seemed it had plenty but a quick top up anyway made the light happy enough to not bother us again.
Breakfast was right near the Golden Guitar and after a feed, a gander at all the signed guitars (Dad, who is Kenny Rogers? - Jackson) and a plot course on the giant map (avoiding any and all hills and mountains) we stopped for a happy snap.
Unfortunately the chance to play Horse with No Name on the community piano out back, well...thanks again for nothing covid!
Back onto the road and after fueling up, we got stuck in roadworks. Hilariously Carol our phone GPS decided we were spending way too much time trying to turn right and suggested we get past the congestion by driving north more then east and that should clear things up nicely. Great idea Carol, lead on!
But instead Carol took us rallying..
Normally I'd be quite thrilled being in a rear wheel drive vehicle and all on an unsealed road such as this if it wasn't for the following:
a) The broken turbo
b) My family being in the car
c) It was carrying so much stuff it would be like trying to powerslide a battleship
d) If I broke something the NRMA would have a field day trying to find us..
e) All of the above.
Thankfully it was just for a couple of kms before Carol ran out of the unsealed stuff to play with and we were back on the road.
From there it was plain sailing (er driving) all the way to Coonabarabran where we stopped for some Subway lunch and finishing early, I went off on a hunt for DVD's for Jackson. (We'd got him a portable DVD player for Christmas and I loaded up a tonne of stuff in .avi format for his sd card. Unfortunately if one of the files has an error - and one did - it stops everything from playing and so I was trying to find an old Top Gear DVD he could enjoy as we pushed onto Parkes.
Best offering at the Rotary Charity Shop? Not one, but two Lenny Henry DVDs! Both of them the same.
I passed on the meagre offerings but the lovely lady behind the counter gave me long winded directions to the other op shop in town, which I promptly forgot as soon as I set foot outside again. Oh well. I instead walked to the local supermarket where I confused a pregnant lady (closer inspection, it was a man) and managed to gorge myself on too many lollies for the sugar hit needed to roll into Parkes.
(The original plan was to hit and stop at Dubbo) but looking at the map we thought we'd push to Parkes instead, which left less mileage to chew through on on final day to Albury. Solid planning that!
Of course the motel we picked didn't have a room big enough for the four of us so one parent one kid ended up upstairs, the other pair downstairs. As soon as we parked, a lovely Greek gentleman spotted the QLD plates and a conversation errupted about road trips while wifey checked in. I think I mumbled through quite a few answers because...well I was pretty stuffed by that point.
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