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Charleston

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!

Christmas Day, 2022

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As we often do, we went to the beach for Christmas Day. Since Christmas was on Sunday this year, we went to church in the morning, and then left soon after the meeting. We headed north along the coast from Greymouth towards Punakaiki, and stopped at the Strongman Mine Memorial to eat our picnic lunch. Of course, Elijah being Elijah, he had to climb the memorial while we were reading it.

After lunch, we drove on north. Because the sea was so calm, we decided not to bother stopping at Pancake Rocks, so we went to the Truman Track, just north of Punakaiki, instead. I took this video of the walk down to the sea, and the fun we had there.

I wanted a new family photo, so we stopped along the trail, before everyone got spread out, to take one. I got this picture while we were trying to figure out where the best lighting would be.

I took this one on the way down, too, since I wanted individual photos. This one didn’t make the cut; we ended up getting all the good ones with Esther’s camera.

It’s kind of a tradition to bury someone at the beach. James had great fun building a dike around himself, but was disgusted when the sea came around the ends!

After we played at the sea here for awhile, we got back into the vehicles and went farther north yet, to Charleston. There, the boys all went swimming and kayaking in Constant Bay, while the rest of us explored the sandy beach.

Use your imagination here! The beach was full of sparkles, as if someone had dumped glitter all over. I tried to get a picture of it, and almost succeeded. There is a drift of glitter through the center of this picture. The water was full of it, too. I think it’s mica.

This bluebottle jellyfish (actually, not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, but often called a jelly) washed up while we were there. The boys had seen it floating in the water just before we found it. We wanted to see the tentacles hanging down, and knew it would die anyway, so we brought it home in a container of seawater. That’s Esther’s hand for scale.

We stayed at that beach for an hour or more, and then went a little farther north, past the mouth of the Nile River, and explored a section of beach with lots of life in the cracks between rocks. There were a lot of these crabs, watching us and trying to get farther back in their safe hiding spots.

There were bluebottles everywhere. Most were washed up and drying out on the sand, but this one was still floating.

When we got home, we put the bluebottle in a preserving jar, and sure enough, the tentacles stretched out. It started feeding, moving its tentacles up and down–see the video at the bottom. It also turned its float up and down, and pulled itself into a horseshoe shape, and then stretched out again. Fascinating! By morning, the tentacles had died and by Monday evening they had completely disintegrated, turning the water blue.

25 Years! (Part 1)

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This week, we celebrated 25 years of marriage. Looking back, it sure doesn’t feel like it seems that a quarter of a century should feel, but the calendar (and our 24-year-old daughter) prove that it has been that long. We decided we should do something to celebrate, and Esther offered to take care of the younger children for us, so we went away for one night. Esther only had two nights at home, and I wanted to spend a little time with her, so we kept this short. It was special, though! It was the first time we went away overnight without a baby along. We went to Charleston, on the coast just south of Westport, and found a motor camp where we rented a cabin for the night. (I can highly recommend the Charleston Motor Camp, by the way. It’s old and basic, but very clean and has everything you need.) After we settled in, we walked down to the beach, and then drove to another beach. As we were walking, we saw this family of ducks.

This was the first thing we saw when we reached the sea. This is Constant Bay, and there were some pretty impressive waves pounding in through that narrow opening! We walked around to the right, after admiring this for a few minutes.

This is Joyce Bay, on the other side of a tongue of land.

Next, we drove north a few kilometers to the Nile River, and out to the mouth. I thought it was fun to visit the Nile!

We ate a picnic here in this spot, beside a cold fire, and watched the sun sinking toward the rocks in the distance.

After we ate, we walked up the beach a little, to where we could see the sun set into the water. It was such a beautiful spot!

These little blue things, about 3 inches long, rather startled us. At first, I thought they were plastic toys, or balloons, or something, but we soon realized they were sea creatures. What really startled us was when we started seeing some of them moving! Watch the video, and the last clip shows one of them moving a little. These turned out to be blue bottle jelly fish, and according to an article I found online after we got home, they are actually four organisms in one. One is the float, one is the tentacles, and two others handle digestion and reproduction. They look fragile, but I stepped on the first one we found to try to see what it was, and it would not pop. It was very tough. They were all over the beach! We were glad, later, that we didn’t touch them, because they sting.

We sat on a log and watched the sun set. Such a special evening!

Next, I’ll share the rest of the pictures we took while we were away.

Tauranga Bay and Gold Mine

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This is a good way to rest after working in the garden! We only have seven weeks to go before we meet our next little one, and I’m really starting to feel that way. With the help of James, and a little help from a couple of the others, I just got our tomato plants set out. It’s supposed to storm this afternoon, so I wanted them in the ground; we’ve had high winds all week since we got home from our trip so I didn’t want to set them out. Today is still quite windy, but with the hope of rain this afternoon we’re taking the chance. Anyway, now I’m tired and ready for a break, so this is a good time to sit down and work on this!

When we left the Coaltown Museum in Westport, it was lunchtime, so we headed out to Cape Foulwind for a picnic. Just south of the cape, at a little bay called Tauranga Bay, we found a lovely spot. We were pretty close to the beach, with New Zealand Flax and other vegetation all around. Several red-billed gulls and a weka or two entertained us with their begging. After lunch, we let the boys go down to the beach for a little while—and of course they immediately started digging a hole!

Wall Island, where a number of species of seabirds nest.

As we started driving again, we enjoyed seeing the clouds caught on the tops of the mountains. Our weather here often comes from the Tasman Sea, between New Zealand and Australia. When the clouds hit the West Coast, they have to rise to get over the mountains, which causes a lot of rainfall on that side of the mountains! By the time the weather gets over the mountains to our side, it’s pretty dry and we end up with hot, dry winds. Since they come from the north-west, they are called nor-westers! So, on a day like today, when we have a hot, dry nor-wester blowing, the West Coast is most likely getting a downpour. Anyway, it was interesting to see it for ourselves, with sunshine down on the coast and clouds in the tops of the mountains immediately inland, as the next picture shows.

Our next stop, after driving half an hour or so, was a historic gold mine near Charleston, which was a boom town at the peak of the gold rush. After the gold rush ended, people moved away, and moved the buildings away, so there was nothing left of the settlement. It is now being rebuilt; we saw several motels. The gold mine was pretty interesting, especially for the boys. They had made sure they had their headlamps and flashlights along this time; when we were there 4 1/2 years ago, we couldn’t explore any of the tunnels, since we didn’t have any lights. This time, they went way in to some of them!

This cute play house is next to the parking lot for the gold mine!

The gold here is in the form of sand. It’s pretty much just dust. The miners would dig out the rocks that contained the ore, and crush them with an apparatus powered by a water wheel. When they had the ore crushed back into sand, they would put it in a sluice and run it over copper plates coated with mercury. The gold dust would combine with the mercury, and then they would heat it in a retort. The mercury would evaporate, then condense again away from the gold and they could reuse the mercury. The gold extracted this way, the man in the office said, was about 99.9% pure!

These two pictures show just a tiny glimpse of the incredible scenery we enjoyed on our way from Westport to Pancake Rocks. We thoroughly enjoyed a sunny day, one of only two on this trip.

Coming next…Pancake Rocks! Check back in another day or two and see if I got the videos up here of the incredible show we were privileged to see!