Winkler Park Saddleworth

Yesterday we had one of those "let's go for a ride" moments so we left for Saddleworth at about 10:30 am this morning.

Most of the 140km trip was ok but having a 60kph road work speed limit for about 30km slowed us down a little. Heading north just south of Terowie were quite a few cruisers of various makes and even some riders waved.

Winkler Park is about 2km south of Saddleworth and we arrived about 12:30 and rather park the bike in the car park and walk I took it over and parked next to one of tables.

 



It didn't take long to unpack the bike with what we needed for lunch either. As I took this Heather was trying to break her camera by taking one of me. The Galaxy Note 8 is on the dash shelf and is mounted with one of Samsung's mounts which is made for it.

 

 

Somehow this photo got taken with me behind the bike.

 

 

Then Heather wanted one taken as well. I moved the mount to the fake tank cover for the trip back home and it seems better there.

 

 

I loaded some music on the tab and tried out the little Bluetooth speaker that Heather got a freebie with her phone. I used a lead rather the pair the speaker with the tab. At 3 watts it's not what you'd call loud but good enough for around the table and inside a tent.

 

 

After lunch we packed everything up and went for a walk around the southern half of the park.

 

 

We managed to get a photo of one the parrots

 

 

and a red bottle brush just coming into flower.

 

 

and a wild pea. The only other flower in abundance was the sour sob. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalis_pes-caprae

 

 

The park is between the Barrier Hwy and the Gilbert River though up here it's more like a creek.

 

 

At about 3:30 pm we left for home via Clare so we could avoid the roadworks on the other road. It's about 10km further and with stopping at the supermarket in Jamestown we did it in about the same time and arrived home about 5:20 pm.

Our ride map. The new Google maps won't show the route we took the same as the old maps so here's the link http://goo.gl/maps/mbrsx

The little 8 inch tab performs 100% as a GPS using the SYGIC app. But it's being used as more than just a GPS. I have a fuel/maintenance/trip app called Driver Diary from Google Play installed on this one just for bike use and the same apps on our 10.1 tab for the car. Plus I can load music like I did for today and all in one item.

 

Saddleworth Ozstoc RTE June 2013

We had a foggy start to a ride down to Saddleworth for our lunch and there was a chance of rain as well. Just we left town the fog cleared and we even had some warmth from the sun but it wasn’t to last for long.

Map Link http://goo.gl/maps/4Jslb

About 10 kms north of Hallet we were back in the fog again with about 500 metres visibility but getting thicker the further south we went. By the time we left Hallet anything after a 100 metres was a guess. As luck would have it a 25 kph speed limit was in place due to road works, no one was working so I kept it at 40. A little later the limit was up to 80 for about 5 kms and then down to 40 (kept at 60). Road works seemed to have gone on forever, maybe it was the fog, may be the slow speed as it’s normally 110 k/h. At one point in the fog it did seem like we did have a light shower of rain but it was hard to tell for sure.

I had four cars behind me so I pulled off the road at Mount Bryan and let them pass and a few kms down the road just after the Crystal Brook turn off the fog cleared leaving a clear run to Burra where we usually take the truck by-pass route unless we need food etc. At 11.20 am we pulled up in the hotel car park.

I took the photo of Heather standing in the hotel car park.

About a minute later I spotted the lights of four bikes coming towards us. All four 1300s all arriving together from places down south. So, we beat last years turn up by an extra ST and three people. Just we were about to go inside the hotel a green 1100 (Mikep) arrives from Port Augusta making 6 ST’s and 10 people.

I had a senior’s moment and forgot to get a photo inside the hotel but I managed a few shots of the bikes and a short video taken on my still camera. We were the last to leave at 2:30 pm and from what I can see is that we all had a good day and we thank everyone for turning up.

1 Green ST1100A, 2 Red ST1300's, 2 Black ST1300's and my Blue AT1100A.

From Left, Mike, Pete, Richo, Donna, Heather, Kathy, Don and Mel.

 Kathy and Don all ready to leave

 Rich and Kathy getting ready and mike next his green ST1100A

 The group that met down in the city took photos as well so maybe more to come.

The return trip for us was incident free other than a sudden drop in speed as a white car (about 1 km away) we were following and slowly catching was turned out to be a local police car. In the 40 kph road works section, he did a u turn and stopped on the side of the road. No doubt doing speed checks in the lower limit. He waved at us as we passed him.

The end result for us was a round trip of 266 kms over 3.5 hours with an average speed of 77 kph and 15.5 litres based on my average fuel usage.