Somewhat boring day today. We packed up and checked out of our hotel in Uluru, Millie FaceTimed with my mom for a while and drew a picture of us on our hike yesterday, complete with our fly masks and the flies. So accurate.

The drive to Alice Springs was 4.5 hours and we did it all in one shot with the help of movies and audiobooks. It’s not like we had a choice in the matter, there aren’t exactly a lot of places to stop. It rained for the second half of the drive.

We arrived at our hotel for the night and checked in. Millie immediately got into imaginative gameplay. We wanted to go eat but it’s hard to break her away from these states, so we let her get it out of her system. I have a working theory that she has a few different things she needs to exorcise each day. She needs to act/play with her imagination, she needs a good cry, she needs physical activity, and she needs to draw.

Eventually the promise of pizza got her moving. We went to the Alice Springs Brewing Co and had some pizza and beer. It was quite large and reminded us of breweries at home. Millie and Nick kept telling each other secrets and laughing.

After our early dinner we went to the local grocery store to refill our breakfasts, fruit, and car snacks. Alice Springs is much larger and livelier than we expected, and the store was packed and sold out of lots of things. There were a couple of large aboriginal families shopping and Millie immediately clocked that they weren’t wearing shoes. She simply stated “mom those people aren’t wearing shoes” to which I said “nope, they aren’t.” She then said “why do only the people with dark skin not wear shoes here?” I waited until the car, but then we did the thing where we try to explain years of history and complex concepts to her within 3 minutes. I am always amazed by how she just gets it, without any judgement whatsoever.

We came back to our little caravan park and played in the room until the sun went down.