The Welches and the Gilberts...

Well...Phew! Back in Wanganui after another set of travels. Pictures of our South Island adventure to come soon - Milford, Te Anau and Queenstown, Mount Aspiring National Park (with Ryan, yeah!!), and Patrick's further adventures tackling all of the Great Walks. After we got back from my parents trip, Patrick went off tramping with Mike and Morris and I pretty much worked a ton through the entirety of February, until we left town again. No time for blogging left. But I have a quiet afternoon today before work tonight so I'll try to catch up!! (When I'm not shouting at the Jayhawks...) We met up with my parents and the Gilberts in Rotorua - for some reason I didn't take any pictures there...But we stayed at Jack and Di's Lake Road Lodge, overlooking the lake, had High Tea at the Princes Gate Hotel, and checked out the thermal wonders at Wai-O-Tapu. The next day we had planned to drive to Raglan in the morning and spend the day playing on the beaches there...but Mother Nature had other plans. It was rainy and dark, so instead we stopped at the Waitomo to see the glow-worm caves. You can't take pictures of the actual glow-worms (picture looking up at a starry sky, it's like that, but in a cave!)...Of course, after the extra driving to Waitomo, when we emerged from the caves it was sunny and warm. Darn! We stopped at our favorite Waitomo eatery, HuHu for lunch, and of course, it started to pour again!

After Waitomo we made it to our Kiwi Bach (what New Zealanders call vacation homes, short for "Bachelor Pad" - used to be retreats for men to go fishing/hunting/etc, but has morphed into their generic term for your beach house/cabin/etc.) in Raglan. This is the view from the back deck around the time of sunset. You can see the remnants of the thunder storms that plagued us in the distance. Not a bad view, eh?

We left Raglan en route to Wanganui the next morning, and took a detour to take the 15 minute walk to the Bridal Veil Falls. This is what Patrick and I call a "High Yield Hike," typical of New Zealand...walk for 15 minutes and you get to see something totally gorgeous/amazing. It is a huge waterfall that just shoots out over this ledge. Papa, Mom, Patrick and Molly took the many wooden steps to the bottom to look back up. It is huge!!

Here's a tip for driving in New Zealand -- coastal roadways that appear to be short-cuts are actually multiple-hour gravel roads that wind up and down along the coast through forrests and hills. This is the drive OUT of the Bridal Veil Falls turn-off we took! It was beautiful, but probably a little longer than anyone bargained for. (22km in 2 hours!) Whoops!