This is the route I planned for the long trip to Johannesburg tomorrow. The N1 is the national route between Johannesburg and Cape Town and is a much faster but also much busier road, with lots of holiday traffic as well as buses and trucks. Google Maps of course doesn't allow for the time taken to refuel or stop to let the dogs out the car along the way. My overnight stop was at Britstown, not shown on this map but just to the right of the marker showing the approximate time and right where the minor road I was on joins onto the N12 at a sharp right angle.
A great deal of the route was through the Karoo - a mighty desert with many zones. I am not sure what determines the zone - if it is just a change in vegetation or the amount or rainfall, but I do know I went through the Tankwa Karoo and the Hantam Karoo (and probably some other portions of the Karoo)
@ludwigsdiana Thanks so much, Diana. I was pretty worried about it before, especially because of having to get three dogs out of the car safely for potty stops along the way! Some friends recommended I take the N1 - the logic being that there are Ultra City fuel stops every 200km which would be busy for me to walk the dogs around safely, but there was a part of me that knew I had to attempt the route I had done with Don previously - a kind of "letting go". I have realised I have to do whatever it takes to accept and be grateful for the memories, but yet let go of the past and move into a future without Don.
