Day 50 - Kingston to Adelaide - 339km

Today we completed the trip around Australia with our return to Angaston where it all began Christmas Day 2012. I put over 20,000 kilometres on the KTM, went through 10 tires, broke countless items, crashed more times than I'd like to admit and had the time of my life. I'd like to thank Alicia Evans, Jason Wilson, Mike Longwell, John Longwell & Colin Evans for each riding a portion of the trip with me and sharing the good and the tough times. It is a good feeling to finish the lap of Australia and even better to know I'm heading off tomorrow morning with Shea for the bonus trip to my new home in Queensland.

Alicia and I had breakfast delivered to our room at 8AM to motivate us to get an earlier start and the hotel owner handed me our breakfast platter and my wallet. Apparently I had left it at the restaurant last night and the waiter had called the local hotels until they found where I was staying. The hotel manager walked to the restaurant that night to get it for me as he suspected I was leaving early in the morning and knew the restaurant was closed on Easter Monday. What a legend! This town has to be the friendliest town I've ever been to. I recommend Kingston if your ever down south of the Coorong.

We headed North up the Coorong and drove out onto the beach for the first time. We blasted down the empty beach with dunes to our right and nothing but the Southern Ocean and Antarctica to the left of us. After a while the tide started coming in and forcing us up into the deep, difficult sand. We decided to turn around and Alicia turned toward the ocean for some reason. I heard her scream over the headsets and looked back in time to see an abnormally large wave hit her. Luckily she kept the bike upright and only had one side soaked with salt water. We rode much faster back down the beach to beat the tide and spent the rest of the day on fairly tame dirt roads and highways.

As we approached Murray Bridge, and South Australia's coldest day of the year so far, the rain took its toll on Alicia and her father Colin finished the last hour of the trip for her aboard the Husky. Other than the cold and the rain it was a great day to finish the trip around Australia and we celebrated with left over wine from our engagement party. Stay tuned for the next trip which starts early tomorrow.