300 days, wow. I remember in the early days of the trip and writing these posts, thinking it would be forever until we hit the 300s. But we just chugged along and here we are. One of my big lessons from this year is how valuable it has been to commit to something every day and to just do it, no excuses.

We have started having a lot of conversations about the lessons of the trip, which I’m sure will become their own post once we’re home. In general, we have started to feel the shift from staring at the horizon of the year to having the end in sight. I’m so excited to be home but know how much I’ll miss this time. Mixed feelings.

We didn’t do anything momentous today to mark the milestone, but it was still the type of day I’ll wish for someday. Alarms went off at 3:45AM so we could shower and be ready for our 4:30AM Uber ride to the airport. We breezed through security and got to our gate.

The entire terminal was packed with mine workers in matching neon work clothes. We had read about the huge mining industry in Western Australia and it was interesting to see how it works in practice. These are known as “FIFO” (fly in, fly out) and they usually do one or two week stints at remote mines.

The flight that boarded before ours was entirely full of fifo workers, and then our flight to Adelaide was full of laypeople. We took off at 6 and landed 3 hours later at 11:30. For the math whizzes out there, that’s not a typo. Adelaide is 2 hours and 30 minutes ahead, which sounds like a nightmare for remote workers. I could barely keep west and east coast times straight while living in Texas.

We picked up the rental car that will be a close member of our family for the next two weeks as we embark on our Outback adventure. We paid a little extra to upgrade it from the compact we reserved, since we’ll be driving so much. They offered an Subaru Outback which would have been fitting for driving to Uluru in the Outback, but we went with the sensible hybrid RAV4 to save money on gas.

Our Airbnb wasn’t ready so we went to Kmart to stock up on supplies. We got Millie a booster seat since it’s cheaper to buy new than rent for 2 weeks. She got a new raincoat, shoes, and a very sequined Elsa dress.

We got a cooler, ice packs, a lot of water, a lot of sunscreen, and a lot of snacks. We are ready.

By this point we had killed enough time that we could check into our Airbnb. We unloaded everything and put on laundry. I took a short nap. Homebody Millie didn’t want to leave and entertainer herself by building forts and drawing. We’re going to be on the move a lot soon, so we leaned in and just had a lazy afternoon.

Huge milestone. She made her first “no boys allowed” sign and taped it on her bedroom door.

At dinner time we were all too wiped to go anywhere. And in general I am so over restaurants. I walked to the grocery store and got very basic ingredients to make my trip special of boring pasta.

We are staying in the center of Adelaide and it was like a ghost town. I’m not sure if it’s the heat or if everyone had already left work for the day, but it was strange. I saw maybe 3 other pedestrians and very few cars.

Came back, whipped up the pasta, and then we continued our lazy evening, literally lounging around and reading until it was time for bed.