After a relaxing breakfast and morning at the Casino at Townsville that included watching some of the Running Festival we were suppose to be in my wife and I said our goodbyes with her getting ready to head out to the airport to fly home and me packing my Harley Davidson Road King ready for an afternoon ride to Mackay, my first stop on my ride home.
It was Sunday and the weather was great! As such there were lots of bikes out and the ride heading down the coast was very pleasant. I called in to Bowen for fuel and spoke to a couple on a 2010 Road King and was actually surprised they hadn't been to (or were aware of) the HOG Rally, they were just out for a ride. I guess that marked for the formal end of the Rally experience, attendees now dispersed thinly across the state on their chromed machines.
Strangely I really enjoy riding through sugar cane plantation areas. It's a stark difference to out west where you can see to the horizon and there's lots to see, smell and keep an eye out for. Burning crops, strange little trains, refineries with little towns built around them. This area hadn't changed much since I rode through this way in the mid '80s.
I also happen to like "big Things" and will always stop to take a photo if I get a chance. Today I snapped a Big Mango south of Bowen. Sadly riding alone substantially reduces the number of happy snaps that get taken, particularly if you are there for the ride and not being a tourist. A number of times I wished that my son was on the back ready to take photos while riding past.
I arrived in Mackay mid afternoon and had booked into a serviced apartment with it's own laundry. Today I needed to restock the clean pile of clothes in my King Tour Pack so I had enough to make it through the next three days until I arrived home.
Laundry is boring but fortunately the apartment had a mini bar right next to the washer/dryer and Austar, so the afternoon moved on with an interesting mix of bourbon, rum, scotch, cola and pineapple dance studio. The appartment complex also has a bar and steakhouse but for dinner that night I was haning out for Chinese. Surely it would be easy to find, Mackay's fairly sizeable.
After a couple of laps walking the main street it seemed that Noodle Boxes were popular and food of most nationalities, but I could only find one "proper" chinese restaurant and it was an old fashioned red and white checkered tablecloth version with the husband cooking and the missus serving. I took a risk and was glad I did, the food was decent and plentiful but no deep fried icecream. So off to Cold Rock back near the apartment and back to the mini bar and TV, and adjustment of the drying clothes and I settled in to watch a movie or two.
No destination in mind for tomorrow, hopeful but not confident I'd reach Coolum, but that would depend on what time I got away in the morning and whether the forecast bad weather arrived.
Today's Route 386k's
