After leaving our little municipal park behind, we made the hour drive to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, the place everyone said we had to go whenever I mentioned wanting to see a koala in person. Hubby was feeling the after effects of his rambunctious ride yesterday, and was a bit tired, so he mostly found places to sit down while I wandered around. We managed to see the sheep dog show (very ordinary, the sheep all knew what to expect and the dogs didn't exactly complete their tasks as ordered, plus the keeper had to discipline one dog because it had started to get in the habit of barking when the other was doing its thing) so it wasn't exactly very thrilling, or even interesting. We also went to the free flight bird show, and again, the keepers behaved as if doing a show was the last place they wanted to be, and the final big raptor that was supposed to appear never did, so it kind of ended with a thump. Unfortunately, with it being Sunday, the place was packed with screaming kids and bad parents, especially the divorced ones that you could tell were on their one day out with the kids, so it wasn't actually very enjoyable. It seemed more like a zoo than a sanctuary, and that the animals were being highly exploited, especially the koalas, just for the money. Sad to say, but that's how it felt. About mid-afternoon we finally left, and headed down to another campground we had found on Wiki-Camps about two hours south, this time a $25 place, but they had a laundry (which turned out to be free!), but no dryer, so I quickly washed several loads of laundry and put them out on the handy line. This place was a ways off the freeway, part of a mountain lodge, at the end of a dead end road, and though it catered to a younger crowd, ended up being nice and quiet. I had a short conversation with a young French guy about his tent, which was a split-level job, with the bedroom on top of his truck and the living area down below, something I'd never seen before. After a while it started to rain, so I had to run out and get the washing down before it got too wet, and fortunately the sheets had gotten dry in time, though a lot of the rest of it had to be scattered around the inside of the campervan to let it dry. Thank goodness it was a quiet spot, though, after being in a parking lot next to a train and a road last night, so no earplugs tonight!
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