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Away From Home

Crossing Cook Strait

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On the second day of our trip, we got up early at our campground in Picton and went to catch the ferry. We sailed on the Bluebridge line, and our ferry was to leave at 7:45, so we needed to check in by 6:45. We made sure to be there early, and took our breakfast along with us. Some ate in the van while we waited, after we had our family worship time, and some ate on the ferry later. We had a pretty smooth sailing. There was enough rolling when we were on the open ocean that my head felt very dizzy, but it wasn’t too bad. The scenery was gorgeous while we were going through the Marlborough Sounds!

This was soon after we left Picton. We had spent the night at a campground near the bay to the left of this picture where the marina is; Picton harbor is to the right of the point of land in the middle.

One of the Interislander ferries. We followed it all the way to Picton, and passed two others going the opposite direction.

This was likely a mussel or oyster farm. There are a lot of them in the Sounds.

Reaching the open ocean! The Interislander is out of the Sounds in this picture.

We spent a little while on the viewing platform at the bow of the ship, but it was so windy that we went inside after awhile.

Nearing Wellington. There are a lot of windmills around to generate electricity!

I think this is the Baring Head lighthouse at the entrance to Wellington Harbour.

Wellington

Here is a video I put together of clips from that trip, including driving onto the ferry.

This next group of pictures are from our return trip, a week and a half later. We traveled on the Bluebridge line again, but on their other ship. Again, we caught a morning sailing, arriving at the docks just before sunrise.

While we were waiting to board, we could see the Beehive, our country’s Parliament building.

Our last view of Wellington! After this, we stayed inside most of the time. This boat didn’t have the nice viewing decks that the other one did, and the wind was fierce.

We passed this cruise ship as we were leaving Wellington Harbour. Two tugboats were on the way to guide it to the dock.

There was one viewing deck that was pretty sheltered, so I spent time there with the little girls at various times. The wave the ship made cutting through the water was fascinating!

Gayle also spent time outside with the girls. Here Gayle and Miss Joy are peeking in at us!

Back into the Sounds! Little Miss and I spent most of the rest of the trip here on this deck, enjoying the gorgeous day.

Lots of seagulls there!

The wake of our ship as we turned around a point in the Sounds to head into Picton.

Trip to Picton

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On the 25th of January, we took off from home to travel to the North Island. Most of us had never been there before, but we were invited to a conference just north of Palmerston North. We decided to go, and then go on up to Auckland to get US passports renewed for six of the children. Some friends here loaned us their van, since we no longer have a van and would have had to take two cars. We were away for a total of 12 days.

On our way to Picton, where the ferry takes off for the North Island, we stopped for lunch at Lake Rotoiti, in St. Arnaud. There were a lot of eels under the pier that went out into the lake, looking for a handout. It was fun to see them!

When we arrived in Picton, we had a few hours before we needed to check in at the holiday park where we planned to spend the night, so we went to the marina. The aquarium that used to be there, which we visited a couple of times years ago, is gone–there is an empty space where it used to be. The Edwin Fox museum next door is still there, though, so we went through it. We couldn’t actually go on the ship this time, as it is being restored, but we enjoyed watching the film about its history and looking at the ship.

Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie enjoyed the cutout pictures!

Little Miss enjoyed climbing on top of an anchor.

After we settled in at the holiday park, while I heated the soup for our supper, Gayle took the younger children to the pool. They loved swimming!

Four Wheel Drive Trip

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Some friends came to visit over New Year’s, and they and our boys went on a couple of four wheel drive trips. Here they are taking off on the first one, somewhere around Reefton.

A few days later they went up Napoleon Hill. Simon was able to go along on that one, and Esther rode with him and documented it.

I put several video clips together. The first is from the first trip; the rest are from the other. The last two show Elijah stuck in the mud and pulling himself out with his winch.

Christmas 2023

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For Christmas this year, we decided to go to Punakaiki and walk the Porariro River track. Some people wanted to go to the beach, but more of us wanted to do a bush walk, and this is the one that was chosen. We got there in time to eat our picnic lunch. Because it had been raining, the ground was quite wet, and of course we had forgotten our camping chairs, so we sat on the inner tubes the boys had taken along. That got pretty funny; the four boys who sat on one figured out that they could bounce in rhythm! I tried to get a video of it, but they always stopped as soon as I picked up the camera!

This is a twig that one of the children brought me.

Have a close look at how Simon parked. He was “trying to park beside us.”

The river was in flood; Esther said it was about two feet higher than the other time she walked this track. It was gorgeous!

I saw grooves on the underside of this rock from when they blasted it to form the track.

I’ve never noticed a bud on a Nikau Palm before. It’s huge!

I think this was a tree that fell over and an arch was formed for the track to go through. Gayle wanted a picture of me inside it!

The children all reached the swing bridge ahead of Gayle and I. Of course, James was bored and had to find ways to entertain himself and everyone else. This is what we saw!

We missed this. Esther captured this shot before we got there.

He quickly scooted down when we arrived–the same way he got up!

On the way back, Esther and I walked together. Gayle must have caught this picture of us going across the bridge. Everyone except the three of us walked back on a different track; we returned to the vehicles and drove around to pick them up.

I got a picture of this weka while it very busily searched for worms among the dead leaves.

As always, we enjoyed our day, and headed home quite tired. However, the boys dove right in to working on the barrel boat again!

Kayaking

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It all started the day we went to a baptism in Waipara. After the baptism and a shared picnic, someone brought a trailer load full of kayaks. The boys played in them all afternoon. That triggered a renewed interest in boating.

As soon as James had a rainy day for an excuse not to work on building his sleepout, he started building a barrel boat. It happened to be the day Simon came home before breakfast for his days off, and without even coming in the house to say hello to me he was busy cutting barrels open! Several days of work later, with the help of a friend who came over several times, they had the project finished!

Of course, the boat had to be tried out! They only had time that evening to float a short distance on the river, and it rained so much overnight that the river wasn’t safe the next day. However, Nelson Creek was in flood, so they decided to try the boat out on that! Nelson Creek is too shallow normally to get the boat down, but in flood there is enough water. So, they went from church back to our house to load up the boat, our boys’ two kayaks and James’s boss’s kayak, and came back to get another friend’s kayak, and headed to Nelson Creek to jump off.

Several days later, they took the barrel boat and several canoes down the Grey River from the Ahaura Bridge to Ngahere. Esther walked down to the river with them to bring our ute home; they had left a vehicle and trailer at the point where they planned to pull out. They packed a lunch to eat along the way, and had a great time–although two people who normally wear long pants got very sunburned legs!

Today, some of the boys stopped at a yard sale and bought two more kayaks! This will be the summer of boating, I have a feeling.

Cross Country

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On the first Thursday of December, one of the moms in our homeschool group organized a cross country meet. Quite a few families from the region came, some driving 45 minutes from one direction and others coming an hour from the opposite direction. The children were divided into age groups; the youngest ran one kilometer, the middles (including Little Miss) ran two, and the older ones (including my two school-age boys) ran three kilometers. Part of their route ran through the bush, and I was stationed, with Miss Joy, at a fork in the trail just at the bottom of these steps, at the end of the swing bridge. Miss Joy was quite bored for awhile as we waited for the runners to reach us.

Then they came! Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination stuck together through the race.

I had given my camera to a friend who stayed at the finish line, and she got pictures of my children completing the race.

After the races there were athletic events. The only one I got a picture of was the shot-put, but they also got to throw a discus, do a long jump, and do sprints. This is Little Miss doing the shot-put. All the children had great fun that day!

Mount George

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I don’t have a physical bucket list, but one thing that has been on my mental bucket list for a long time is climbing a mountain. A week ago, we had a regional holiday on the Monday, and a friend told Gayle that he was taking his children to climb a low but challenging mountain on the coast north of Greymouth, Mount George. Gayle decided to take the younger children, and when I said I would like to go, too, the older ones (except Esther who didn’t want to get muddy, and Simon who was working) went as well. It was pretty funny to see their faces when I said I would go! I haven’t been able to do that kind of thing, because I’ve always had a baby or been pregnant or recently pregnant. Now, I’m more free to go on adventures!

This was one of the tamer parts of the track. It was still fairly steep!

See someone holding onto a tree? It was necessary, much of the time, to climb by pulling oneself up that way! Miss Joy is visible just past Gayle. She walked up, and back down the mountain! What a trooper.

The view got more and more amazing, the higher we went.

We were headed up past that outcropping of rock.

This was the worst bit. It’s nearly straight up, and you have to climb by holding onto a knotted rope. A ladder has been bolted into the cliff, and then at the top of it you have to get across the crack to the other side of the wall, then keep going up. Miss Joy had no trouble navigating it–but coming back down it took me several minutes to work up the courage to step across and onto the ladder where you can see someone going across on the way up, here.

There’s the top! Most of the children were up there long before we made it. As you can see here, Miss Joy was way ahead of me by this point–she’s at the left of the picture wearing a light blue dress.

Here is proof that I made it to the top of the mountain! It was very bright up there.

I saw this flower on the way down–so beautiful!

Cape Foulwind

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Last year, when we went to Charleston for our anniversary getaway, we went to Cape Foulwind to walk to the lighthouse. It was raining, though, so after we sat in the car for awhile waiting for the shower to stop, we went on to where it wasn’t raining. This year, when we got there, the weather was dry and lovely, so we walked to the lighthouse and on beyond.

Most of the trees around the Cape are stunted from the constant wind and salt spray, but this larger one stands out.

The Cape Foulwind lighthouse.

Looking down from the base of the lighthouse. That concrete structure is apparently the base of an older lighthouse.

We walked along the top of the cliffs on a very nice, well-maintained track for a quarter of an hour or so. Then, my adventurous husband decided he wanted to get down to sea level and find the old railway bed that a sign had mentioned! So, he found a track down the cliff and we scrambled down. In most places, we couldn’t see where the railway had been, but we got to see this seal, who headed out to sea at sight of us.

We walked along the beach until our way was blocked by these huge boulders. I stayed on the ground, but Gayle climbed up to have a look at what lay beyond. Guess what? More sandy beach! The railway bed is visible just to the left, at the top of the rocks.

This rock, with its few brave bushes clinging on, is just offshore.

When we walked back toward the beginning of the track, we saw this place, where the railroad went through a cut. There was a quarry somewhere around here. We aren’t sure, but we’re guessing it was a granite quarry, because of the huge amounts of broken granite that line the shore.

This area seemed to be a dumping ground for rocks and dirt.

When we arrived back at the car, this cheeky weka wanted to get in with us, or mooch something.

We went on to Westport, and after turning around and backtracking, found our way to the south side of the mouth of the Buller River. This is the view looking south from there, and the lighthouse on the south breakwall.

October 2023 Photos

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Here are the rest of the photos from October. One of the younger children’s favorite places to go is the dump down the hill from our village. I was informed, “You don’t give us Christmas presents, so we have to come up with our own.” So, they drag home all sorts of “treasures.” These beams were among recent finds. One of the boys took pictures of them to send to Simon to see if he wanted them, and Goofball obviously wanted to be in the picture.

Our friends in Ngahere had a bonfire to get rid of Simon’s garage, which he dumped in their paddock (with their permission) to get rid of it.

We took some friends to Waiuta the beginning of October, and someone got this picture of Esther and Miss Joy.

Gayle often takes the children on a walk or to go swimming when he comes home from work. The day they begged him to take them swimming, they quickly decided it was much too cold, so they played in the warm, dry sand instead.

Another day they made a different kind of castles by the river.

My sister asked me how to make t-shirt dresses, so I sent her a picture of some I recently made for the girls.

This picture shows something amazing. That Jersey calf gave us a lot of trouble when he was born. He was born one afternoon, and by bedtime we could tell he hadn’t had a feed yet. I milked his mother and gave him a bottle, and he took it greedily. The next day, he wouldn’t suck at all. We tried him on a bottle a couple of times, and tried to get him to suck on his mother, but he absolutely refused. The next day, we forced a few cups of milk down him, but he was getting very weak. He struggled to stand up, and when he sucked it was very weak. Simon got us a tube feeder, and we tubed him twice. I asked for advice on a house cows group, and we prayed a lot for this calf. The third day, we followed the advice we got, and did something called the Madigan squeeze on him (google it). We did that twice, and the second time, he started making sucking motions. That evening when we put his mother in with him, he sucked on her for the first time! The next day, we went away for the weekend, so we left this calf with his mother. When we got home, he was bouncing around happily, acting perfectly normal and healthy. Two days after that, we had to move the cows to another location for grazing. Since that place isn’t calf-friendly, he had to stay behind with the beef-cross calf, so we gave him a bottle. The first time, he wouldn’t drink; the second time, he took nearly a whole bottle, and the third time, he was away. Since that day, he has greedily sucked down every bottle we give him, and wanted more. I took this picture to remind us of the miracle God did for us.

Little Miss had an assignment in her Language Arts book to write a poem about spring. She decided to illustrate it, too!

Sand art. This kept them busy while Gayle and I were away, and then the sand went in the trash.

This also happened while we were away. The girls made bouquets to sell to Esther!

This quad bike went up to the farm with Simon, so he can fix it.

Charleston, Again

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Gayle and I decided to get away for a night to celebrate our 26th anniversary in October. We went to Charleston for a night last year, and enjoyed it so much that we decided to go to the same place again. When we booked into the campground, they gave us the same room we had last year, too! After we paid for our room and put our things into it, we went on a walk. Twice last year, once by ourselves and once with the family, we explored around Constant Bay, so this time we checked out a track that went south of it. We started out on this tame track, and enjoyed the quiet and the green.

Then, we reached this sign. If you know my husband, you will know that he considers a sign like this to be a challenge. Of course, we went through the gate. I kept my eyes open for hazardous spots! We concluded that, most likely, the sign was put up so that the track didn’t have to be kept up and so that DOC wouldn’t be liable if anyone got hurt.

We were treated to spectacular scenes along that track! First was this view of the mouth of Constant Bay, with waves rolling in one after another.

Then, we walked out to one little inlet after another, each one spectacular in its own way.

One area of dense bush we walked through had deep mining trenches like the ones we see at Nelson Creek.

We sat out near the end of one of the rocks and talked for awhile. Here’s the man I love!

Looking back toward Charleston from one of the higher points. You can see the Paparoa Mountains off in the distance; we live on the other side of them.

These hardy flowers grow in a crack in the rocks.

After awhile, the track got so rough that I was ready to turn back. By then, we were scrambling up and down steep areas, holding onto the trees alongside for support. We returned to the track that was kept up, and were treated to more gorgeous views! After enjoying them, and talking for awhile on a bench overlooking this bay, we returned to the campground, cooked some food, and took it up the coast a little ways to eat it at another beach while we watched the sun set. What a delightful evening!