I'll pay you back

Garrett was thrilled to find out we were boarding another flight the next day out to Uluru, or as the white man calls it, Ayers Rock. A World Heritage site. The flight was just a short 30 minutes from Alice.

Mom was stunned on the flight when a woman came up to her and said in booming voice, “Hello Sister Quinn!” Mom just stared at her and you could see the wheels turning as she tried to figure out who this woman was and how she knew here. Finally after a pregnant pause the woman said, “You don’t know me. I’m from Utah and I saw your nametag.” Mom’s face slowly regained color as she exhaled and remember she was wearing her name on her clothing.

Nothing got spilled on Garrett on this flight.



When we got in to the resort it was beautiful and we wandered around to check out the view of Uluru, and to make our plans for the rest of the afternoon/evening.

I planned some activities for us, and one of them involved disposable cameras I handed out to each member of the family. The objective was to use half the pictures to tell a unique story they would write to go with their photos, and the second half to try and catch the funniest or most creative shot of a person in the family. You can see dad was busily engaged with his disposable camera, while mom followed him around taking shots of him taking pictures, and Garrett shooting mom, shooting dad. Creative family.



Our plan for the night was a camel ride to see the sun set over Uluru. Right before we were going to walk out the door to the camels, Dad suddenly sat on the couch and said, “I’m not going.” Like this was going to be OK with everyone. I was sort of expecting this moment since his last experience on a horse in Costa Rica involved terror (his) and getting bucked off his horse and almost trampled on a cliff. Horses do smell fear and I have never seen anyone so scared of a horse. Needless to say he was relived when that trip ended with no plans for a future horse ride.



Of course, these weren’t horses – they were camels. So what’s the problem? We wheedled, cajoled, threatened and finally mom told him he WAS going and that she had paid $99 for his camel ride. His response? “I’ll pay you back.” A clever response, but it didn’t work out for him – he was forced to come.

You can see the tenseness on his face. And how mom is laughing at his fear.


The camels did make a lot of loud, scary noises as they jumped up with us on board, but turns out it was an easy ride, no one got bucked off and dad admitted it exceeded his expectations.



The sunset was beautiful, but we didn’t really enjoy it for very long and I was anticipating we would see the sun set behind or even near Uluru and the two were not connected at all. It was still fun though and seeing dad on a camel was well-worth the $99 and then some.



One other benefit of the camel trip was meeting Deborah and her son from Chicago. She was a lot of fun, had led an extremely interesting life and ended up going to dinner with us and telling us all about her life story. One of the best parts of traveling is the interesting people you meet and connections you make.