Day 186 - Fog again this morning but the forecast said it would clear so we headed to the grocery store before heading to the Mackay Highlands. Our destination more specifically was Eungella (pronounced young-ella) National Park. The drive was pretty short at just over 80kms straight inland. The day was clearing and heating up, we took our time driving at a leisurely speed. Not much on the way but a couple of small towns and a couple of sugarcane mills. Hatton Finch was the last one we passed through before we hit the monster climb. I think I got poor Herc out of second maybe once or twice the whole time, it was so curvy and steep. The view was awesome, even had little waterfalls right on the road. When we got to the top we stopped at the Eungella Chalet for some ice but got a whole lot more, in the way of a ridiculous view. We just had to stay for a drink and enjoy it. We could see for miles, the road we took up looked like a small snake in the distance. The chalet was complete with a hang gliding take off ramp off of which I got a sweet panoramic view and shot with the new camera.
After a BBQ for lunch, it was time to hit the trails. We have been to numerous rainforest already but this one turned out to be the rainforestiest (if that's even a word). I think it's because we are getting out of winter and we are also more north. Deep in the forest we encountered our first live snake as it scared the begeezes out of Jenn as she was walking in front. It wasn't too large an average size green one but it was in a "ready to strike" pose, before it slithered off into the under growth. The rest of the walk we were a little bit jumpier but we had no other "incident" lol. The hike led to the amazing Sky Window lookout, where we turned around.
We had booked a five dollar camp site in the Crediton Forest part of the park. It was a 15km drive from the actual town of Eungella, with the last 8km or so on what seemed like never ending dirt/gravel road. At one point we thought we missed something as we came out of the forest and hit hilly grazing farmland. And that's where we seen our second snake in the last few hours. This guy was just laying smack dab in the middle of the road. It didn't even move when we pulled Herc up right beside him, it kind of just hissed at the tires. He was a pretty healthy sized python. Jenn having a bit of a snake phobia and me not being the Crocodile Hunter, we took pictures from the safety of our van WITH the door closed. We finally got to the camp site which was located beside an old abandoned one room school building. It was so far out in the middle of nowhere we were shocked to see another campervan show up later on.