26 May 2011
Perth to Yallingup
From giant pelican to pudgy black Lab, meet Roxy.
Roxy is hanging out with us here at the Yallingup beach as we watch sunset and surfers. One of those surfers out there must belong to Roxy, for not only is her beachside gaze fixed out to sea, but each time a surfer paddles into shore she swims out to greet them. So far no one has claimed her as their own, but there are still a few brave souls out there as darkness falls, so as we leave her to walk back to camp, we hope one of them is hers.
The road to Yallingup was long but easy. If today is any indication of the road to come, we may make better time here than in Tasmania or New Zealand. That would be good, given that we want to cover the entire southwest corner and have much less time to do it in. Maybe biting off more than we can chew but who else would we be if we weren’t the ones that more often than not plan the length of our trip before planning what we intend to do on it?
Besides our sunset beach walk, we spent a few hours earlier in the day traipsing along the northernmost end of the Cape To Cape track, completing a 7 km (return) easy walk from the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse to Sugarloaf Rock. At the time of our hike I had no idea what a sugarloaf was, but after a quick review of Wikipedia, I can say with confidence that I have no idea why that rock was named sugarloaf. It looks nothing like a sugarloaf, unless you count the fact that most big rocks that stick out of the water near ocean shorelines are tall-ish and pointy-ish (hence why they stick out of the water). I would say that Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach, Oregon looks more like a sugarloaf than Sugarloaf Rock, but then again, Haystack Rock really looks more like a haystack, so just nevermind.
Cool things we saw along the walk included dolphins surfing the nearshore waves and a big roo hopping out of our path. Not so cool things we saw along the walk included a snake. Even less cool, this was a snake I nearly stepped on while stopping to take a photo. Now we think the reason I nearly stepped on it was because it might have been dead, but it still looked fresh enough that neither one of us wanted to poke it to determine if our theory was correct. Better to just wonder about that one and keep walking the other way.
