About a month ago, the children and I had to go to Christchurch to renew our American passports. We left the city in good time and headed back across the mountains to our side of the island. The plan was to drop the older four children off at a Bible Study we often attend, to go home with Gayle, while I took the younger ones home. We thought we had some extra time, so when we reached the top of Arthur’s Pass we decided to stop at a nature walk we had enjoyed a couple of years ago. The older ones all went ahead, and I stayed behind at Little Miss’s slower pace. We thoroughly enjoyed the scenery and the flowers, and the break from the city and the van where we had been all day—but ended up arriving half an hour late at the Bible Study. It was worth taking the time to stop anyway!
Some of the scenery we enjoyed driving up to the pass:
This is a very noisy creek we crossed on the way from the carpark to the walking track.
The road had only reopened that morning after a rain storm washed out bridges a few days before. I think they got 3-400 mm of rain in two days (that’s about 12-16 inches). Normally, we would have driven through here to another car park, but we decided the van wouldn’t handle this washout very well!
We enjoyed the many alpine flowers that were in bloom.
These huge leaves belong to the Mount Cook lily, which was in bloom farther along the track than I reached.
Looking back along the highway towards the Canterbury side of the pass.
Little Miss ran ahead of me. She was enjoying her freedom!
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