On our morning toilet walk, Barbie noticed the kangaroos for the first time. They had always been there, but I think they moved at an inopportune time. The kangaroos up here are pretty small, not like the massive red kangaroos that we used to see around Kalgoorlie. I got her to forget about them eventually.
For the second morning in a row, we took the dogs down to the beach for a run. The dogs were quite tired, and it didn't take long before Barbie made herself comfortable on the sand.
We then took the dogs back to the homestead, to leave there for a few hours so that we could properly check out the Cape Range National Park.
On the way out there, we were flagged down by a guy on the road near 'the dune'. We were told we should go look at 'the dune', but not to go too far or we would get bogged. Well, this guy was bogged, but as we stopped he looked at the X-Trail and said 'I don't think your car is big enough to pull us out'. I was like, no - we don't even have recovery points on this car, it's really a city car.....so N offered to go back to Yardie Creek and ask someone to help him out.
We pulled back into the gate and they made fun of us "can't bare to be away from them from more than five minutes, hey"? They said they would go help the guy stuck on the dunes, but when we drove back past he was gone so he may have pulled over a proper four wheel drive car in the meantime.
We enjoyed swimming and sightseeing in the National Park. The Ningaloo Reef is pretty famous as a tourist attraction - it really is the WA version of the Great Barrier Reef. We really didn't get to do as much snorkelling as I'd like though as we didn't want to leave the dogs at the homestead all day - they had to go to town and go shopping and stuff.
Yardie Creek gorge is just lovely, and though we didn't have time to go on a boat trip we decided to go back with our kayaks to paddle up it. We also want to go and swim with the whale sharks during their season. We are looking at going back up (without the dogs) in May.
On the way back into the caravan park we managed to snap these emus hanging around outside. Emus are very cute and very fast. I found myself wondering if they would beat Barbie in a foot race. 
We went to the homestead and collected the dogs and headed back into town for lunch. We revisited the cafe we went to last time because we knew it was dog friendly, and lunch was pretty good.
After we ate, we took the dogs back to town beach, though they were pretty tired and it was blowing a gale.
Barbie decided that she wanted a nice bed in the sand out of the wind, and in N's shadow out of the sun. I decided to record it after watching so many turtles dig holes in order to lay their eggs. Barbie's digging style is a lot quicker than a turtle's though!
Note her strange one-pawed digging style and the fact that she knew precisely how big to dig the hole!
No dogs are allowed at the Lighthouse caravan park but they do have a resident Staffy. She had such an expressive face. Later when I asked the folks at Yardie Creek about her they said they had to put signs up telling people not to feed the Staffie as she was getting huge!
Once we had our icecreams we drove up the hill to the lighthouse to check out the view. It was blowing a gale and N didn't want to get out of the car. Neither did the dogs. I got out to take some photos and almost got blown off my feet!
I got some good photos though! I noticed that a fair few cars we had seen in the National Park that day, or spotted in town, or both, drove up the hill, stopped briefly, and drove back down.
Sightseeing for the day was over and we headed back to the caravan park. We had dinner at the homestead again and it was so cool to be hanging out with them. I was so glad to have finally met N's friends who live in Exmouth. The kids were also so charming and cute.
The dogs were exhausted and sprawled in various positions around the deck. After some wine and a lot of stories and food we headed back to the tent for a good night's sleep.
To be continued.....
