Marks Offroad Adventures and Daytrips

 Tooday my wife and I decided to go for a drive down South visiting North and South Dandalup Dams and a drive through Serpentine Dam, we left home arou 10:30 am heading down the Freeway to Lakes road or first stop was at the Service Station to pick up some Food and Drinks, we then made our way to South Dandalup Dam where we stopped and had lunch,  then I went for a quick look around. After a short stop I hopped back in the car and then we made our way to North Dandalup Dam, this is one of my favourite Dams to visit it has a nice picnic area close to the water with toilets and Barbecues plus there is usually a lot of birds flying around, unfortunately there wern't many today, so I had a bit of a wander around the picnic area thene we went for a drive over the dam. We then Made our way towards Serpentine Dam stopping at the lookout on Kingsbury Drive, we didn't stop at Serpentine Dam as it was quite busy and we had to get home to pick up the daughter from work. Below is the view

 Earlier on during the week I had planned a drive visiting Roley Pool,  Mt Dale Lookout and a few other stops for my day off unfortunately the weather was not great and it rain most of the trip my First stop was at Roley Pool the walk trail was an easy one around 2.5kms a real nice walk lots of Granite Boulders , picnic area Boardwalks  and plenty of water flowing  Was supposed to go to Thompsons Roley pool, Boulder rock and Christmas tree Well but it rained most of the trip and I probably spent a little too much time at Roley Pool. The next stop was at the Mt Dale lookout the road ther was wet, muddy and plenty of pot holes on the way so it was a slow drive after arriving I took some Photos from the lookout and went for a short walk around the trail. There is an animal hide that I wanted to check out, but it started to rain again so I headed back to the car for the trip home.     On the way home I made a quick detour to have a look at Forrestdale Lake Nature Reserve wher I had grown u

 Today was a different type of trip for me I had been searching on Google Earth for locations of Granite Outcrops, and also searching for Abandoned Mines or Quarries to photograph, today was probably not the best day as it had rained most of the day, I found a track on google maps that would take me to to locations I wanted to look at and headed down Mills rd east to find the track, after turning on the track I followed the maps until I got there the track was quite rocky, sandy in some places, muddy and wet not suitable for a 2WD Vehicle, I have an AWD forester which handled it pretty good. When I arrived at my destination it poured down with rain and I never got out to go looking for the Abandoned Mines or the Granite Outcrop which wer roughly in the same area, I decided to try another route home as it was quite a rough track, after using google maps unaware at the time, it took me to the Powerlines Track which as way worse than the track I just took, the Powerlines track is rocky, m

 Today I decided to go for a look around Thompson Lake Nature Reserve there is a 6.4km walk trail around it , there are also several entry points around the Nature Reserve. Today I went the the Russell rd car park and went for a wander around that area, it was reasonably late in the afternoon so I didn't go very far about 3.5km there and back I have been here on several ocassions sometimes on foot or for a ride on my bike but it is always a nice place to go for a walk although in the colder wet months a part of the trail is under water so the best time to go would be probably be in the spring, in the summer you are  likely to encounter snakes around the reserve. All year round there is usually birds and Kangaroos, wildflowers, in the spring as the lake starts to dry up for the year the waders are usually found in the shallows or in the mud. Here is a few snaps from this trip All images are Copyright Mark A. Gray   Read more about Thompsons Lake on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org