We absolutely love camping next to water, either rivers or lakes. It means we get a clean up in the morning and we don’t need to stress about our water supplies. Plus, its calming, you know all that nature crap people love so much. Back at the task at hand, we are being eaten alive if we stop moving this morning, so pack up is quick although we still sneak in brekky.
Crossing the river, we exit down the dirt track, back to the main dirt road. By now almost all the campers have already left and there are some pretty prime areas open. But ours was great.
On our way down the mountain, we get stopped by some friendly workers running a crushing and screening setup, since I am doing the same job we stop and talk, they are all friendly and provide us with coffee and vodka and even allow use to place a sticker on their machine. We always seem to meet interesting people in random spots. Like a road side quarry…
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- Wonder how many years that window will last?
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- Found this little guy on the road
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- That looks very WW2ish
Our goal today, go into the mountains to visit Lastiver caves, and find a place nearby to camp. This all goes to plan till the uphill starts. Once again the poor little rig is getting hot. Like normal, we idle it if it gets to 105-107 and let it cool down, but I have had enough. It can’t just be the fan. Out come the tools, the A/C condenser has ingested what looks to be 27463636 bugs, just where the fan sits. Bugs bugs and more bugs. We sit in the shade poking at the radiator with zipties.
And that lasted all of 3 minutes, between the heat of the car and the heat of the day we are not in the mood for this, back to town we go. At the car wash I strip the front end as far as I can and begin power washing. Now were cooking! Well not cooking actually, our little beast is now holding a steady 82c on the easy climbs, and only up to about 97 on the big climbs, so the fan is still an issue, but this has helped. The road up gets worse and worse, the last river crossing is deep, full of rocks, and we needed to do it twice as the road dead ended. Pretty sure this is the death blow to the intercooler on these rocks.
The walk to the church is on a side of a cliff almost, plus its like a black dirt base, so it’s a little slick. But the church is all rock, and has some cool carvings into the rock, up the ladder was locked and we couldn’t get in. So, we headed back to the car.
The road out takes us past many little waterfalls some old vehicles and through some stunning photo perfect farm land. This country is beautiful in the summer. Flowers everywhere! We have had to back track due to the fact we couldn’t find a single suitable area for the wagon to park with area for use to setup. The road was tight and all outcrops were so small Pina had no room to run, and we couldn’t set up our awning.
So, passing back through town I have found a small quarry on the Ioverlander app and we head out. Also, town had a weird building. Looked neat though.
In the quarry we set up on the flat and enjoy the night with a nice little snack platter as Pina hides in the black berry bushes when he is not 10 meters up on the cliff. As the sun sets it paints the rock a golden colour that we enjoy as we have a final drink for the night.
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- The pokey bastards are everywhere!
