Sunday, November 11 Walkemin Campground to Palm Cove – Meeting Chris and Amy

Hiya Neighbors

      We had our coffee and oatmeal in the 'shed', a large communal area with couches and chairs, cooking and barbecuing equipment, dart boards, games, antiques, funny posters, and a cool old Whippet pickup truck. It would be a fun place for big parties, at least if it's warm.

The shed

     We had a short drive to Palm Cove where Chris and Amy had booked an apartment. Passing banana and mango and papaya farms, then up over the coastal range on a winding road through the World Heritage Wet Rainforest Reserve, we were in a very different world. Humid but not hot, verdant with bright colored blooms, tropical exotic. We pulled over briefly at the lookout, seeing the coastline for the first time, excited to be able to visualize the path of the moon's shadow that would pass over in just a few days.

     We tried calling C&A, but kept missing each other. We drove into Palm Cove and discovered that their apartment was next to the only campground in town. Now if we could only get a place to stay for a few nights. We pulled up to the office and a sign out front said no vacancies for the night before the eclipse. But all the nights surrounding that night had many openings, so we booked in for two nights, delighted to have a place to sleep right there on the shoreline. We'd figure out eclipse eve later.

      After parking the LC we walked up the esplanade towards C&A's apartment. Diana rang them again and this time got to talk to Amy. Within a few minutes, we were laughing and hugging each other.

     Palm Cove is a beautiful little resort town, typical I suppose for tropical vacationers, but pretty exciting for us. We walked along the beach, nice clean sand with an area netted off to keep deadly box jellyfish away from the swimmers. Palm trees and flowering bushes line the sidewalk, the two and three story hotels fronted with restaurants and gift shops.

"I think the it would look better if the trees leaned this way"

     We had lunch at one of the eateries, tasty but overpriced breaded prawns and squid salad. But nice to be having a meal with our neighbors, which has always been one of our favorite activities. 

Hurry up with the food already, we're tired of smiling

     Then we went out on the jetty, or pier, looked around the cove and decided that if we got up early enough on eclipse day it would be a perfect spot to see totality.

Mandatory 'end of the jetty' photo...

... ditto

      After shopping for food and wine, I made seafood marinara with fettuccine, Amy made a salad, and we washed it down with four different varieties of Cabernet/Merlot. They were all drinkable.  Diana and I got back to our tent at around 10:30, we'll have to try to make the evenings a bit shorter, sunrise is at 5:30 am and in a couple days we'd be getting up at least an hour before that to be in place for the eclipse.