This isn’t the actual road to Uluru, but this was common to see when we arrived in Alice Springs.

It was pretty obvious a minivan could not plow through the goopy, sloppy red Outback route to Uluru. Essentially, the roads were open only to the burliest of vehicles. No matter how much the Honda Odyssey believed it was a Mad Maxian four-wheel drive, there was no way we would make it. No way. It was time to find another mode of transportation to take us to the most famous monolith in the world.

Uncharacteristically heavy rains had churned and upturned the soil of Australia’s red center. Water wrecked havoc on the town of Alice Springs, and the Todd River had overtaken some of the city’s streets.

Locals said if you saw the Todd River even flow at all at three times you were a local. Considering the river’s raging water, we definitely were one-third local.

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