Day 39- Townsville

June 5, 2011- Day 39

Where: Airlie Beach to Townsville

Dinner: Pasta with brown butter sauce, corn, pumpkin, and fresh scallops.

         It was sad this morning to leave Airlie Beach since it's the first place we've really made friends. I wish we could have taken some of them along to travel with. We have each others contact info now though so hopefully we'll meet up with some of them in Cairns. This morning it was overcast and by the time we checked out of the camping area and parking down by the lagoon it had started misting. We checked out the little swimming lagoon but didn't swim because of the rain. We walked through town once more time before getting some Dominos pizza for lunch. We even passed one of the girls from the boat and we were walking back to the van.

         There isn't really a whole lot left between Airlie Beach and Cairns and we still have 8 days left with the van. We're having a bit of a hard time planning where to go. I think we're going to go north passed Cairns and see what's up there before going back to Cairns to return the van and check into our hostel. So today we drove two hours up to Townsville, the last city before Cairns. It rained on and off throughout the day, and Pat and I were both pretty tired from the past few days. It was another one of those days where we wished we had a big couch to lay on all day. It's a bit surprising how much I find that I miss having access to a couch. We had a rather uneventful day driving and we got to Townsville just as it got dark.

        We're parked at another hostel that has super cheap parking rates for Jucy vans. The benefit is that we get to use all of their amenities. We bought some fresh scallops in the shells at a little roadside seafood store. In the kitchen at the hostel we made a brown butter sauce with fresh corn in it and then a really nice older guy offered us half of a pumpkin that someone had just given him. We added that to the pasta and then shucked the scallops and cooked them. It was a very tasty meal! I love scallops. Tonight marks the first night that we've slept in the van inside of a parking structure. It's actually a bit weird to be surrounded by concrete, but there are some open areas so it's not stuffy. Tomorrow we're planning on spending the day looking around Townsville.