Tree forts and wine.

Day 26: Sunday, July 12th, 2015
Steps taken: 4,317

I slept well for a few hours, then woke up and my mind was racing for an hour or so.  I finally got back to sleep and woke up a little later then everyone else.  I was feeling ultra lethargic, and didn't want breakfast.  That was until Martin said it was pancakes and bacon rather than our standard cereal and toast.  There's always room for bacon! (And jell-o, but not bacon jell-o.) The pancakes were thin so I had a bacon sandwich, and a nutella sandwich with the remaining pancakes.  We fed one of the little dogs the rest of the bacon, cleaned up, and hit the road again.

The drive was getting much more lush.  Sand and little bushes gave way to grass and trees.  The Plindes Mountain Range lined most of the drive.  We made a stop to an abandoned village.  Many of the sandstone buildings/houses were falling apart, but some were intact well enough.  Kodak and I had a discussion about how stupid and vain people can be when they carve their names into sites.  I hope a wall falls onto the next person who tries to do that.  (Not really, but sort of.)

For lunch we stopped at a park, finished most of our lunch supplies, and then some of us played on the jungle gym next to the picnic table area.  I finished reading Michael Scott's The Enchantress right after lunch.  It was a good series that feeds my love of contemporizing classic myths.  I want to do my PhD in either Ireland or Scotland, and would like to meet Michael Scott while doing my dissertation.  I recommend his work for anyone who enjoys fantasy and myth.  And if you don't enjoy fantasy and myth, why the Tartarus not?

Our next stop was the Seven Hills Winery.  We arrived around 2:30-3, and did some sampling.  There really wasn't a tour like the Tyrell Winery, and I definitely liked more of Tyrell's selection, but the lady who was giving the sampling was nice, and their underground cellar was cool.  I really liked their Inigo Verdelho, and Barberra (and their Inigo Montoya) wines, but everything else was okay.  The best part of the winery was the white feline Maysie who was curled up on straw in a grape crushing bucket.

From the winery, we went straight to Adelaide.  The neon glow of fast food places and stores had replaced pristine nature.  I wish we got to hike the Plindes, but that wasn't part of this tour.  I also would have liked to spend one full day in Adelaide, but this tour doesn't seem to really do big cities.  We arrived at our hotel at close to 6 p.m.  The rooms were pretty decent.  I showered before we were supposed to go to dinner, and tried to get a wifi signal.  For whatever reason, the hotel only provided wifi when the reception desk was open, and that closed at 5 p.m.

For dinner, we went to a Chinese food place near the hotel.  Jeff who left the tour after the first leg to go work in Adelaide met up with us.  I ordered some handmade chicken dumplings, and wanted to get a lychee drink, but they said they didn't have the drink.  Everyone else's drinks took a good thirty minutes even though most people ordered beer.  Our food came out almost an hour after ordering, and pretty much one by one even though we were the only people there at that time.  The dumplings were decent.  There were ten bite sized dumplings.  When I got to the register to pay after we were all done eating around 9 I saw that they had cans of lychee drink in the fridge...Really?!  REALLY?!

After that I hunted down wifi for my laptop.  I went to the place that runs the hotel, and they couldn't provide me anything.  Then I went to the hotel around the corner hoping I could buy a voucher, but they couldn't give me one since I wasn't staying there.  My last resort was Whackdonald's (McDonald's).  Even though the wifi was free I figured I should buy something.  I was planning on buying a mint chocolate macaroon, and was next in line when this chick who was probably there between clubs, and lines of coke asked me if she could go in front of me since she was only getting a drink.  I said "Actually, I'm not getting much either.", but she still stepped in front of me and began to order right away.  What an impatient idiot.  I should have flat out said no, but I didn't think she would have listened.  It's not like the supermarket where she had a druggie dinner for one, and I had my groceries for the week.  I was annoyed, but I expect this from morons, and let it slide.  Then the couple behind me cut in front of me without asking.  DID I HAVE A SIGN ON MY BACK SAYING TO DO THAT, YOU FILTHY FUCKING BOGANS? At least the first person asked before being an asshole.  At this point I said fuck it.  I didn't want to spend money in a shit establishment for garbage food.  Keep your McRoons! I sat down to get a signal on my 3DS, and no luck.  When I left, everyone on the streets resembled the bogan scumbags in WhackyD's.  I returned to my room before I could go off on some drunken and drugged out scab.

When I got to the room I was asked by Lazar if I wanted to go to the karaoke bar with the others.  I didn't really want to deal with anymore bullshit in Adelaide, but maybe I should have gone to karaoke, and left when everyone else wanted to do other things like bar hopping.  I relaxed, watched some news, an episode of Bones, and the beginning of an episode of Arrow, and then went to bed.  Maybe better off not being able to get online.