We agreed to leave the campsite at 5:30am, so I woke up at 4:30am to use the bathroom and eat some cereal. We then drove about half an hour to a dune near Kata Tjuta to watch the sunrise. From the angle there, the sun rose near Uluru which illuminated Kata Tjuta. It was pretty difficult to take photos because even as the sun was barely rising the flies were already out to harass us.

Since it was after sunrise, it was about to get very hot (as Adam put it, we would be walking through the barbecue), so we wanted to get started with our hike quickly. We hiked through the Valley of the Winds, which goes up a gorge through Kata Tjuta. As we hiked, Adam pointed out all the bush tucker (plants you can eat) along the path, such as bush plums and bush cucumbers.

When we got to the top, Adam taught us from a scientific perspective how Kata Tjuta and Uluru were formed. Hundreds of millions of years ago there were volcanic eruptions which sent lots of sediment throughout the land (Adam pointed out the "mother" and "father" volcanoes in the distance). The large sediment does not travel as far as the loose sediment, and Kata Tjuta is much closer to the volcanoes than Uluru, so Kata Tjuta is made up of larger sediment than Uluru. Then, other looser sediment in the area was eroded away over hundreds of millions of years. Finally, the Alice Springs Erogeny??? occurred, which was the tectonic plates getting squished together, which caused the rocks to be pushed onto their sides. So Uluru is actually a rock that has turned 90 degrees on its side, so the vertical lines are actually sedimentary stratification (in a normal mountain you'd see this as horizontal lines).

We didn't spend too long at the top of the Valley of the Winds because it was so hot, but we did take a break for snacks - Adam had brought Anzac biscuits and museli bars - and photos. Then we headed back out the way we came and drove back to the campsite.

At the campsite it was Team Kangaroo's turn to make lunch. Adam assigned me to barbecue duty, and I picked Nils 2 as my barbecue partner. We barbecued camel burgers, which were pretty fatty and tasted really good, a lot like beef, but much more environmentally friendly. While we were eating lunch, Adam drove Bierte to the airport, since she had a flight departing today, and he picked up our final group member, Jenna (from Canada), who had missed her flight the day before.

After lunch we stopped at the Ayers Rock shopping area, which would be the last opportunity to buy things for a normal price for the remainder of the trip. Adam suggested we try some Golden Gaytime, which is a novelty ice cream. According to Adam you can't get anything like it anywhere else, but I think it is pretty similar to the chocolate eclair bars you can find in the US, just a different flavor. Outside the plaza there were a lot of aboriginal women painting and selling their paintings. According to Adam, this is the cheapest place to buy aboriginal art, because local galleries would sell it for a 100% markup, and in cities like Sydney there would probably be a 500% markup. I bought a painting that depicted Uluru, Kata Tjuta, and Atilla. The woman said that the artist lived in Docker River and wasn't there today, so I didn't get to meet her.

We drove an hour east and stopped at Curtin Springs, which was the only place you could buy alcohol on the trip. Everything in the shop is super overpriced, but the alcohol laws in the Northern Territory are really strict because of the high aboriginal population. Aboriginal people can't handle alcohol very well, and the aboriginal communities are located hundreds of kilometers away from Curtin Springs, so they have actually opted out of alcohol sales there, to prevent people from getting drunk and then driving back home.

While we were at Curtin Springs Adam said he noticed the bus driving poorly before, and thought we had a flat tire, so he decided to swap it with the spare (the tire did not look flat to me). It took about an hour, and Nils 1 helped him. After we left, Adam said the bus was still driving poorly.

We drove for another ninety minutes before pulling off the side of the road to collect firewood. While looking for firewood I spotted some kangaroo tracks in the sand, but there were no kangaroos to be seen, I'm sure they were all sleeping under trees further from the road.

Finally we made it to our campsite, King's Creek Station, around 6:30pm. We would have been there much earlier had we not stopped to change the tire. Geographically King's Creek Station is located much closer to Uluru, but there is a huge salt lake in between them so the road has to drive all the way around it.

At King's Creek Station there were no local children to steal our things, but there were dingoes who would eat our food or steal our shoes. (Dingoes are basically just wild dogs, so of course they love to steal shoes). We headed up to another hill to watch the sunset. The geographic features here were less interesting, but the sunset was still magnificent, and the stars were once again amazing.

After the stars came out we headed back down to the campsite for dinner. Tonight's dinner was kangaroo steak, potato mixed with onion, and homemade bread. The food was absolutely delicious, probably one of the best meal's I'd had on my entire trip up to this point. Kangaroo is a really lean meat, maybe only 2% fat, but it is somehow still incredibly flavorful. It was cooked really rare, almost blue, the inside of the thin-cut steaks were practically raw. Kangaroo meat is also a lot more environmentally friendly than cow, and all kangaroo that are hunted and sold for meat are free range, organic, and non-GMO. We ate in the dark by the fire.

While we sat around the fire we made smores with tim tams. The marshmallows tasted strange, like they were flavored, and I kept trying to ask what flavor they were meant to be but no one knew. The tim tams were completely melted as well, so the entire smore process created a huge mess, but tim tams are definitely a game changer for smores (so much better than graham crackers). After the smores we played some games around the fire before sleeping early since we'd have another early morning the next day.