It was even warmer this morning when we got up, around 4 deg C. We had a relatively slow start packing up and making use of the civilized bathroom amenities. We eventually left a bit before 9 am and headed west towards Big Red. We aired down (16 psi front and 18 psi rear for me), turned off stability control and put the sand flags up. Then climbed Bid Red without any worries. We stopped on top for a few photos and then drove off the steep side for a fun trip down.
Then it was off west on the QAA Line Track over the dunes, we travelled behind another car for awhile and he did all the radioing ahead as it was quite busy. The dunes weren't particularly hard except for a few scallop holes near the top and the main problem was some humps between the dunes which needed to be taken slowly. The other car eventually dropped off and we continued on with Shane up front, me in the middle and Brett coming along behind.
Lunch was at a spot where a Shane thought was the Hay River Valley, or that's at least what his GPS told him. The traffic got less as the day wore on and we stopped for some photos by one of the salt lakes.
I was going to put the drone up but it was too windy. We eventually turned south towards Poeppel Corner and drove along side one of the salt lakes, it was probably the smoothest section we had driven all day. We got to Poeppel Corner and eventually got to take some photos after the previous group had finished taking their million photos. Just as we were leaving a red helicopter arrived and landed so the passengers could look at the marker.
After that, the track (French Line) went down hill badly and got very bumpy with continual small humps, although the dunes weren't as high. This was very tedious and tiring and we were lucky to average about 10 kph. We were aiming for Knolls Track but we ended up about 10 km short of it as the sun was getting low and making it hard to see the track ahead. We found a nice spot off the road with tons of fire wood and setup camp for the evening. After relaxing around the camp fire for awhile we cooked some dinner and sat around the fire until about 9 pm, when we all went to bed quite tired.
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