Scouting out our next stop

I just had to write about the great day we had today scouting out the location of our next stop.
With sun shining and blue skies above, we all headed 90 kms up the Pacific Hwy to Ballina. It had been a few years since we had driven this stretch of road and it was great to see places like Broadwater and Woodbine along the Richmond River looking so good. We remember Woodbine as being windy so it's always been "windy Woodbine" to us but it certainly didn't apply today.

Ballina is much bigger than I remember but to be honest I've never really looked around the town before. It has a long main street of shops along Pacific Hwy but then there is also a shopping centre with Big W, Target & KMart, etc, etc a few streets away. (The first KMart we'd seen in a long time). As I had my breakfast REALLY early thanks to an ant biting my leg in bed (damn those ants) finding somewhere to eat was top of my "to do" list. We found a Starbucks where we could sit outside in the shade to have a lunch of pies and yummy cold iced mochas. It was a great spot for Angel and I to hang out while Stephen did a quick once around the shops. So with Angel spying on everyone going by from underneath the table I caught up on today's newspaper.

After hearing some dubious reports about caravan parks in Ballina we thought we should drive up here to check them out before we left Iluka. There are not many caravan parks in Ballina that take dogs. 2 of them are right on the Pacific Hwy near the town (yuck!) and the other 2 were on the other side of the river. We caught the vehicular ferry (insert "punt" for people like me) over to South Ballina where there were 2 possible caravan parks to see. It's only a short 4 mins trip which costs $3.50 per car but it's the only access to Ballina from that side of the river if you don't want to drive all the way back to Wardell (10kms). The South Ballina Caravan Park looked promising however the only caravan sites available were on top of ants nests and there wasn't much shade. Next, we went 10 kms south to Wardell to see the Sandalwood Van & Leisure Park. Dawn & Jim who are travelling with their dog, Mr Spock recommended it to us back at Moonee Beach and having a recommendation is a good sign. We liked it very much. It's a shady caravan park (with pool - yeh!) and a doggy friendly off-leash beach only 6 mins away (Patches Beach). So we booked in there from next Monday 4 Feb. I must say though that the drive from South Ballina to Wardell is VERY pretty as it runs alongside the Richmond River on one side and pretty sugar cane farms on the other.

Back on the Pacific Hwy again, we took the Evan's Head turn off to see what was down there. About 11 kms down the road is a little township, an estuary with a pretty harbour and marina. Sorry no pictures today as I left the camera behind. We'd like to get back there to put the canoe in. We had a fun trip back to Iluka singing along to lots of old Monkees songs.

Anyhow, we're here for one last week so will try to do some of the things we hadn't gotten around to like taking the ferry across the Clarence River from Iluka to Yamba. I've discovered a great little beach called Iluka Bluff Beach in the Bundjalung National Park. If your car survives the 1km of pot holes you'll find the carpark to the Iluka Bluff lookout and access to a pretty swimming/surfing beach which is patrolled in the peak season. Unfortunately, no dogs allowed. The water is clean, warm and the view from the beach in both directions looks out onto waves crashing against rocks (one of my favorite views). I'll try to get some photos updated tomorrow. Cheers, Rosy