Saturday July 11th, 2009 : Are we in Nebraska?

We headed out early this morning to get back on the road across the plains. Not too long after we left we hit the Hay plains. Nothing but flat land all the way to the horizon in either direction. No trees, not even any tall grass since its winter. A few cows here and there, but not too much else. I would guess it’s very much what one would see traveling through the central part of the US, but since I’ve never been to any of those states, I can only speculate. We did have a bit of drama again today. Another flat tire!

The same tire as yesterday, well not literally, but the spare tire we used to replace the tire from yesterday. It wasn’t too surprising, I mean, who knows how old the spare was and what kind of condition it was in? Once again though, this happened as we were cutting close on time. Usually if things are open on Saturdays, they close at noon. This second blown tire happened at 11:15 am. There was no way Dave wanted to drive the entire rest of the way with no other spare and NOTHING would be open on Sunday. So another quick tire change and Dave was on the phone with his wife Mary, asking her to do some research as to what was in Mildura, the place we would be stopping that night. She was able to get a hold of a wreckers that had closed, but the guy was still there and he had a tire and agreed that if Mary paid via credit card over the phone, he would leave the tire outside (in a hidden from the street place) for us to pick up when we got there. So all we had to do was make it to Mildura without blowing another tire. Thank goodness we did make it. Whew! We were able to find the place and the tire so we were set for the next day in case we needed it. On the way in we drove past the Murray River, a huge waterway here, where we saw several houseboats floating their way down the river. As well as stopped by “Lock #1.” There are like 11 locks in the river used to control the river flow. We also passed fields and fields of citrus trees. We even stopped on the side of the road to buy mandarin’s for like $1.50 USD for a bag.

We spent Saturday night in Mildura because Dave’s in-laws live there. They’re not actually his in-laws, they are Mary’s brother’s wife’s parents. Did ya follow that one? At any rate, they graciously welcomed us into their home. Mildura is a city in the state of Victoria, that is covered with grape vines as far as the eye can see. All throughout this area there are grapes grown for both making raisins and sultanas (dried grapes, but they are a different kind of grapes than raisin’s, but taste the same. Even the cereal Raisin Bran is called Sultana Bran here) as well as grapes to sell to wine producers for wine. Not only do they sell the grapes to large scale wine producers but there are also wines the locals make. Marlene chopped up some veggies in like 10 minutes to throw together a soup for Dave and I because her and her husband, Alan were headed out to a dinner thing that evening. The soup was so good! I envy people who can throw together things in minutes and taste delicious. I wish I had that skill. Then again, she does cook things from scratch every day, out here on the “farm,” so I guess the more you do it, the better you get. Since I never cook (well rarely) it takes me longer and probably wouldn’t turn out as good.
They actually have grapes growing all around their house, for a couple acres. They used to have a lot more, but sold much of it off, after getting older and not wanting to deal with all the upkeep. We tried some of the local wine made by one of Alan’s mates, not bad. After Alan and Marlene headed off to their dinner Dave and I ate soup, drank wine, and watched more footy and cricket.