Not a busy day today. Left Palm Valley around 1030am heading back into Alice Springs. The drive back to the main road goes through quite a few soft sandy riverbeds, and we came across 4 cars with trailers all stopped in one riverbed. We pulled up to see what the problem was. There was a Mercedes 4WD towing a camper trailer that was really bogged down in the soft sand. The other drivers were starting to dig the car out and let down the tyre pressures, so we lent our Maxx Trax so that the Merc could try and drive out.

Unfortunately, the driver had no idea about the different traction aids and other tech in his car so we were not successfully in getting him to drive himself out. Even after we tried to give him some instruction on how to turn the tech off, he still couldn't drive out. At this stage, another 4WD turned up with a winch, so we decided to pull him out backwards by the trailer. Leanne moved our car well out of harms way, and I became the defacto recovery co-ordinator. It seemed that no-one else really had much offroad or recovery experience. We got the Merc out of the bog, and then he headed off all nice and happy. All the gear, but no idea. Everyone else headed off too, and we were the last to leave the riverbed, about an hour later than planned.

We headed into Alice Springs, and got a site at the Discovery Caravan Park, on the south side of town. Turned out to be a very nice park, with great facilities. A bit of afternoon shopping, and then back to the park for our rental property EGM Zoom meeting, which took about an hour. Afterwards, we caught up with Nicole, Marlon and their kids for dinner at their place. We had lots of laughs around the dinner table.

Tomorrow we will be heading off to do the West MacDonnell Ranges for a few days.