Thursday 5th July. Alice Springs to The Plenty Highway

Back on the road today heading home.  Only 2,658 km to go!

Headed up the Stuart Highway for 68km and then turned east onto the Plenty Highway (so called).  We were a little surprised however to find just how much of it had been sealed (or was being sealed - lots of roadworks) since being on it last - all the way to Harts Range.

Called into Gemtree to take on extra fuel - so dusty here!!

Stopped for photos beside a huge termite mound (did this years ago).

Catastrophy!!  The value of tyredogs (a tyre monitoring system).  The alarm goes off and is telling us that we are losing air in the passenger side camper tyre.  We stop before destroying the tyre and with help from Arthur it's soon replaced with the spare and were back on the road.  It did hold us up however and we ended up stopping the night a little earlier than planned - a bush camp a little off the road.

After setting up camp it was out with the tyre repair kit to repair the tyre.  Quite a large steel spike was the culprit.  We plugged it and it will be fine in an emergency but better get it repaired with a patch when we get to civilisation.

A great fire again tonight.