Mar 19: 4x4ing to Wave Rock

I have a GPS system that I've nicknamed Carmen the Garmin. Carmen has been good to me. Especially helpful in big cities, she seems to know the way most everywhere, can find most anything, and rarely leads me astray.

Except today.

The road to Hyden from Norseman is a wide gravel road, heavily corrugated with loose rock. Huge road trains (trucks pulling two or three huge trailers) fly by at full speed, showering you with an impenetrable cloud of red dust that makes the road temporarily invisible. Somewhere along this dodgy - but relatively good road - Carmen decided to lead me down a shortcut. I use the term shortcut loosely. She suggested I make a left turn off the gravel road onto two tire tracks leading directly into the bush.

Peaches the Pajero (my semi-reliable truck) got her first real taste of 4 wheel driving. Confident that Carmen would steer us right, I veered off road and shifted into gear. We went through sand tracks, across a dried up salt-lake bed, and through several small sets of bushes before rejoining another dirt road roughly an hour later. Save for the strong smell of burning that I have yet to identify, it was a successful adventure.

The Wave Rock was awfully impressive. Whether it was worth the 500km detour is debateable... but it does make for some fun surfing photos.