Away From Home

Milford Sound–Part 2

March 17, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

We were excited to go through the Homer Tunnel. Around eight years ago, we read a book titled Below the Mountains, about digging this tunnel, and have wanted to see it ever since. It is about 1.2 km long, and was blasted out of solid rock. It goes down at a 1 in 10 gradient. It is only one lane wide, so there are lights at each end. At times, people have to wait up to 20 minutes to go through. We only had to wait about a minute and a half—just long enough to get out, stretch, say hello to the kea who was keeping an eye on the traffic, and jump back in.

The mountains surrounding the south side of the tunnel are incredible! As far as we could see through the mist and rain, there was roughly a horseshoe of cliffs going straight up, with waterfalls coming down here and there.

This kea was hopping around beside the road, looking for handouts—we didn’t give him anything!

Into the tunnel!

And out the other end.

On the north end, toward Milford Sound, the road goes down sharply in a series of switchbacks. The tunnel is at around 900 meters above sea level, and it takes only 15 minutes to get to the sound! That is a fast descent.

We have arrived at the Sound!

The sheer cliffs are incredible.A duck on top of a campervan.

Some of the cruise ships tied up at the dock.

Mr. Sweetie under a tree.

Sometimes we got to see Mitre Peak, the famous mountain out in the fjord.

That large white splash in the center is a huge waterfall.

Gayle and James figuring out where to go next.

We walked out on a strip of land that goes a ways out into the sound.

We got a good view of the spectacular waterfall from out there.

Elijah, Mr. Sweetie, Simon, Mr. Diligence.

Me with Miss Joy, Gayle, Mr. Imagination, Little Miss

An oystercatcher

Paradise Ducks

The mist about half way up the right side of the picture is from the waterfall.

Mr. Imagination found this crab.

Baby Paradise Ducks

We climbed to an overlook above the township, and were rewarded with this view.

I was fascinated with the plants growing out of the cliff.

The next post will show what we experienced on our way back to Te Anau. So much spectacular scenery! It about overloaded me.

Milford Sound—Part 1

March 14, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 4 Comments

Near the end of our trip, we spent a day driving to Milford Sound and back. We have wanted to go there for a long time, and especially to see the Homer Tunnel, which is part of the highway going out to Milford.

We started out around 9:00 from Te Anau, where we had spent the night with some friends. There were low clouds; we could see the water of Lake Te Anau, and the lower slopes of the mountains.

As we drove on, the clouds thinned little by little, and we caught glimpses of the towering mountains lining both sides of the road.

This valley with farmland opened up as we came over one hill. Most of the way, we drove through a valley with mountains fairly close on either side.

Lake Te Anau is long! I think this is near the end where the highway goes away from the lake shore.

After about an hour of driving, we left the farmland behind completely and were driving through wild country.

This is the Eglinton Valley, where we stopped at a pull-off for a few minutes.

The weather soon closed in again.

We stopped at another pull-off to swap drivers. This would have been about an hour and a half after leaving, just before we reached the Homer Tunnel. There was a beautiful little creek, and a lot of interesting vegetation.

…to be continued. After my first sorting, I got down to 141 pictures for this day. I got that reduced to around 120—still too many for one post!

From Invercargill to Te Anau

March 7, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On the ninth day of our big trip, we drove from Invercargill to Te Anau. To drive straight there would have taken only a couple of hours, so we decided to take a longer route and see more sights. W went west and a little south, and stumbled across a historical museum in Riverton. Because it was raining, we decided to spend part of our day there—it was dry inside! The museum was very interesting. Our tour started with a movie about the Maori and the first white settlers in the area, and then we spent time exploring the wonderful exhibits. Someone noticed this poster, showing gems that can be picked up at a nearby beach, and Esther took a picture of it. The boys enjoyed the room with all the rocks! I liked the historical exhibits better, but this room was quite interesting, too.

We found Gemstone Beach on the map, so we decided to stop there. It was drizzling, but not too hard. The group of people in the center of this picture are our children. They figured that the creek might be a good place to find gems.

This is what the beach looked like. Most of these stones are about 1/2-3/4 inch in diameter. Such a variety! I don’t think we found anything too valuable. We found a lot of jasper, and some that may have been jade, and a lot of others that were just plain beautiful. We filled a 2-quart bucket with them to bring home. They are still sitting in that bucket, except for a few that I put in a quart jar to weight it down so it wouldn’t spill when I put sunflowers in it.

I was quite amused when I noticed “Windswept Trees” on the map! Yes, there were windswept trees—but not more than other places along the coast!

Here are some of the windswept trees.

Shortly after our visit to Gemstone Beach, where we ate our picnic lunch, we turned north and drove for a couple of hours to Te Anau. I would love to see what the area is really like; it was very cloudy and we couldn’t see the mountains that I’m sure were towering over us.

We saw a sign for a historic bridge, so decided on the spur of the moment to stop. That’s one thing I enjoyed about this trip. Most days, we had enough time that we could stop when we wanted to see something. We planned the trip so that, except for the last two days, we never drove more than 2-3 hours a day. This bridge was fun to walk across.

Simon standing on the bridge cables.

Simon found a rope swing down by the river, and gave the little ones some rides on it.

We saw a lot of farming!

When Miss Joy fell asleep, we decided not to stop for awhile—and then came around a curve and saw this area, with a pull-off for photos. We stopped for about a minute to enjoy the scene.

I think this is Manapouri. I was intrigued by the mountain sticking up in the middle of this picture.

I was also amused by the name on this sign.

On to Bluff!

March 4, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We spent most of our day in the Catlins. There was so much to see! Such beautiful scenery. The sun even came out, making the world even more beautiful. This is very near the southernmost point of the South Island.

Can you guess which direction the prevailing winds come from?Those mountains off in the far distance are Stewart Island. For some reason, I had never realized that Stewart Island was visible from the mainland, so it was a surprise to be able to see it.

We stopped for a few minutes near Fortrose. In the mouth of a river there, you can see a shipwreck at low tide. We were an hour or so too late to see that, but the cliffs were spectacular!

Stewart Island

Miss Joy was thrilled to find a puddle! It was the first real fun she had in days. She was quite sad when we took her away from it to move on; she was getting very tired of being in the van in her carseat.

These shags were on a tiny ledge partway down the cliff.

I don’t remember where this was! It had to be near Bluff.

There were interesting murals on several buildings in Bluff.

We saw the famous sign at the tip of Bluff, but there were no parking places nearby, and there were a lot of people around, so we just drove by and went elsewhere.

Instead of taking our picture by the most famous sign in Bluff, we went back to this sculpture and took some pictures.

Then, we drove up to the Bluff Lookout. I stayed at the van for awhile to feed Miss Joy. There are some of my children at the top! Esther took the pictures below from up there; I climbed up when the baby was finished, but didn’t take any pictures.

Stewart Island

The aluminium smelter is in the center of this picture.

And, that was Day 8 of our trip! We spent the night with some friends just north of Invercargill.

Curio Bay

March 2, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Our second stop, on the day we drove through the Catlins, was at Curio Bay. The friends with whom we stayed the night before told us that we would be able to see a petrified forest if we got there at low tide, so we timed our day in order to reach there then. Mr. Imagination found this shrimp soon after we got down onto the rocks. We really enjoyed seeing rock pools again! The ones we used to explore in Kaikoura were destroyed in the earthquake, so we haven’t been able to explore them for a long time.

This bay really reminded us of the Kaikoura Peninsula. It had pretty much the same type of rocks, and rock pools everywhere.

We soon started finding petrified trees! Some were laying down, like this one.

Some seemed to have charred wood.

Some were stumps sticking up.

There was even bull kelp, like in Kaikoura!

This natural bridge was fun!

Another horizontal log.

These swirls in the side of the cliff were fascinating.

Mr. Sweetie found this crab.

We were also fascinated with the layers in the cliff.After exploring the rocks for awhile , we went back to the vans and had a picnic.

We passed this beautiful estuary right after we left Curio Bay.

Purakaunui Falls

February 28, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We spent the Sunday night of our trip with some friends who live in the Catlins, an area in the far southeast part of the South Island. We asked them for some ideas of good places to visit on our way to Invercargill the next day, and one of their suggestions was Purakaunui Falls, a walk not too far from their house. We made that our first stop for the day. I took a picture of the sign at the beginning of the track because I knew I wouldn’t remember this name!

The track went through dense bush, along a creek. It was beautiful and peaceful!

The waterfall was spectacular! It reminded us of Bond Falls in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, except on a smaller scale.

Mr. Diligence, Elijah, Mr. Imagination

Simon, Elijah, Mr. Sweetie in between them, and Mr. Imagination

Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination

Little Miss

After we left the waterfall, we had to stop on the road for a minute because some farmers were moving a mob of sheep down the road. We didn’t actually see those sheep, but we did see this mob in some yards just down the road.

The Catlins are beautiful! Rolling green hills with bush here and there, and sheep and cattle on the hills.

At times we drove along the sea; this is a river mouth.

The beaches are beautiful!

South of Dunedin

February 24, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We spent two nights with our friends in Dunedin. While we were there, I didn’t take any pictures. It was pouring the entire time, and we mainly stayed inside. Our friends had built a guesthouse, which we slept in. I wish I would have gotten a picture, but every time I went to it, I was trying to carry a baby and an umbrella, and dodging around the river that was running down the path we took up to it! It was very comfortable, and we enjoyed our time with them. We left late Sunday afternoon, and headed on south to visit some friends in the Catlins. Just before we left, Esther wanted to get a picture with her two little sisters, in the new dresses she made for them all just before our trip.

Our friends live on a mountain, and the road going down is slightly daunting! I have no idea what the gradient is, but it’s steep!

This is the Dunedin Train Station, which I posted pictures of the other time we were down there. You can find the pictures here and here, if you’re interested.

More interesting buildings in Dunedin.

Houses on the hillside. Dunedin is a very hilly city!

Maybe half an hour after we got on the road, the skies opened in a cloudburst. It was raining so hard that we had to slow down quite a lot. We could hardly see ahead of us. We kept moving, but slowly, and soon the rain let up—but then we started seeing flooding.

We crossed a bridge over the Taieri River, and saw the water pouring over the stopbank on the far side. Esther was taking a video at the time, and caught that.

I don’t think anyone drove into that paddock that day!

It was rather a relief to get away from the flooding as we continued farther south. I was a bit concerned that the road might end up closing, and didn’t want to be caught somewhere we didn’t want to be.

The Clutha River was high, too, but not as bad as up north.

The Catlins are beautiful! Rolling, green hills with cattle and sheep on them.

Twizel to Dunedin

February 21, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Day 5 of our trip was New Year’s Day. We had a leisurely morning with our friends in Twizel, including a late breakfast eaten on the lawn in the warm sunshine (little did we know that was almost the last sunshine we would see for a week!), and then got on our way down the road sometime around noon. We headed south; our goal was to reach the home of other friends in Dunedin. Up until this point, we were retracing routes we had driven other times, but this day everything was new. We drove through a lot of very dry country, broken with lakes here and there that stretched for miles along the road; I am guessing they were all man-made, for generating electricity.

See those clouds coming in? The first hour or two that we were on the road the weather was nice. It was cloudy, but that kept it from being too hot. Then, the heavens opened, and it started pouring! When we finally stopped to eat lunch (around 3:00), it was pouring so hard that we pulled into an empty carpark and pulled the vans up so that the sliding doors were facing each other. Esther and I made sandwiches in our van and then radioed to the other van to open a window so we could pass the plates through. We were so fogged up inside that we couldn’t see each other, but if we opened a window we got drenched quickly!

This was one of the few times that Little Miss rode in our van. The girls enjoyed reading books together.

We saw a sign for the Aviemore Hydro Station and made a quick decision to have a look. First, we crossed the river on the road that goes over the dam, and had a look down from the top.

Then, we drove back across. See the tracks on the sides of the road? It looked like a crane goes on those, and can open the trapdoors in the middle, probably for servicing the power plant.

Then, we looked at the power station from the bottom.

This was a very interesting feature. A fish ladder led to a spawning stream—a man-made channel duplicating the conditions in the wild in which trout lay their eggs. The spawning stream doubles back on itself; it’s apparently a kilometer long altogether.

I grabbed this photo of a ram in the paddock beside the drive down to the power station. My boys saw me taking the photo and called on the radio to inform me that it was a merino. I was impressed by the horns!

An interesting planting of trees we saw on a hillside, after it started raining.

One thing I really wanted to see was the Moeraki Boulders. It was drizzling, but not hard, so we stopped when we reached them, and walked about 10 minutes down the beach to see the famous sight.

These boulders are concretions, formed by something rolling around in sediments and building up layer after layer.

Mr. Sweetie

Miss Joy

Simon

Simon, me, Mr. Sweetie, Elijah

Mr. Diligence, Mr. Sweetie and Little Miss

Then, it started raining harder, and we were already late for tea with our friends in Dunedin, so we hurried back to the vans as fast as we could.

Hooker Valley Track

February 14, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

On New Year’s Eve, after we walked up the Tasman Glacier Walk, we drove around to the other side of the mountain to the carpark nearest to Mount Cook. We have walked the Hooker Valley Track two other times, and loved it each time. This time, I decided to stay in the van and let Miss Joy have a nap on the bed. Mr. Imagination and Little Miss didn’t want to walk, so they stayed, too. I let them stay—on condition that they play quietly, outside the van so they wouldn’t bother their baby sister. She fell asleep quickly, and I enjoyed getting to read and do some writing in the breeze that blew through the open windows of the van. The other two played with four toy animals that Simon had bought for the four youngest children at our friends’ shop that morning. I’m not sure what all they did with them, but they kept busy for an hour! Then, Mr. Imagination saw an avalanche on the mountain facing us, and was so excited that he forgot about being quiet. That was the end of Miss Joy’s nap! I was thankful that she’d had a good solid hour, though.

This is the mountain we were facing. See the nearly horizontal wall of snow stretching across the left side, near the top? There were several avalanches from it during the afternoon, and when we left there was a huge notch that wasn’t there when we first arrived. I think it was made by the avalanche that ended up causing Miss Joy to wake up.

After Miss Joy woke up, the three children played together on the bed for awhile with their animals, and then we decided to start walking on the trail to meet the rest of the family.

Most of the rest of the pictures are from other people’s cameras, since I didn’t go far on the trail.

This is the first (of two) swing bridges. The little ones and I went just to the other side of this one, sat on some rocks there for awhile, then came back, and about that time the first members of our family joined us.

The second swing bridge.

Do you see the shape of the lower slopes? They were gouged out by glaciers.

Mount Cook!

There were a lot of very interesting flowers.

I’m not sure which glacier this is, although my best guess would be the one at the base of the mountain in the first picture in this post. Maybe Esther will comment below; she went on the walk and knows more about the scenery than I do!

Back at the vans! There was another avalanche, which the boys were looking at. See Miss Joy on the bed?

Our last glimpse of Mount Cook for this trip.

Back at our friends’ house, Mr. Imagination found these two pine cones. He was intrigued by the size difference. The little one is about an inch and a half long.

Tasman Glacier Walk

February 10, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Day four of our trip dawned bright and sunny! We got around rather slowly that morning; it was nearly noon before we left our friends’ house in Twizel. We stopped at their shop in town and bought a number of things, including straw hats for a couple of us who didn’t want to add to the brilliant sunburns we were already sporting from our day at Cave Stream and Castle Hill! Then, we headed up along Lake Pukaki toward Mount Cook. We were delighted that the high cloud allowed us to see the beautiful mountain in the distance.

I always enjoy the mountains along the way, too. They line both sides of the valley.

The lavender farm was in full bloom. This photo doesn’t anywhere near do justice to the vivid color.

Mr. Imagination loved riding with Miss Joy. One of their favorite games was to play with wet wipes. They would scrub their faces and necks for a long time—cheap entertainment!

We pulled off to get some pictures of Mount Cook on our way up Lake Pukaki. Esther and I, in the lead van, decided not to stop, but the other van wanted to. They pulled off at the official viewing place, which was crowded with tourists. We told them we would look for a place to turn around, but couldn’t find anywhere for a couple of kilometers. Then, we found an old pull-off, with no one there and a great view! We called the other van on the radio and told them to join us. Then, while we were waiting, Esther and I got the idea that this would be a good place to take a family photo. We wanted to do that sometime on our trip. We checked out the lighting in several places, and found a spot that worked, so she got out her tripod.

This was the view from the official pulloff. Gayle snapped it with his phone.

I got individual pictures of the children, too, and grabbed this shot in the process. This is Mr. Sweetie, Miss Joy, Simon, and Elijah.

Esther took this one while we were figuring out lighting and backgrounds.

Everyone wandered around under the big tree for awhile as we got things figured out.

Lots of helpful advice about the perfect location for a photo!

One of the final results! I don’t think this is the one we ended up printing, though.

As we kept driving, the mountain showed up more and more clearly.

The other mountains are gorgeous, too!

When we reached the carpark for the Tasman Glacier walk, we decided to eat lunch first. We found a little meadow where we could spread out our picnic.

The walk to the viewing spot for the glacier is up a steep hill—a moraine. You find out just how physically fit you are—or not!

See the glacier at the head of the lake? It has a thick layer of dirt and rocks on top. Mount Cook is in the distance to the left.

While we were standing there, I heard a man, who looked like he was about 40 years old, tell his child that when he was born, the glacier was just below where we were standing—you could step onto it from the top of the hill. That’s hard to believe!