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Shantytown and Arthur’s Pass

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The final day of our trip to the West Coast, we stopped at Shantytown, a historic village, for several hours. I didn’t take many pictures there, because I had gotten to the point where I mainly needed to sit. Here are a few, though. One of the first things we did was to ride the steam train. They take you on about a 20-minute ride, back into the bush, then back. Most people got off on the way back at the restored sawmill, then toured the gold-mining area. I opted to go back to the village where I could sit and wait.

 

This enormous stump was at the end of the line—apparently a sample of what they logged out of the area 100 years or more ago.

Esther got this shot of our youngest at the sawmill.

While I was waiting, I amused myself watching Oriental (probably Japanese) tourists taking picture after picture of each other and themselves, and watching this weka go in and out of building after building.

We also did the touristy kind of things—posing the boys in a stagecoach and playing around at the jail. The boys shoved their daddy into the jail—but a couple of them got locked in with him! Right to left, this is Seth, James, Nathan, Simon, Elijah, and Joseph.

This is Seth, Nathan, and Elijah, with Joseph just visible inside the jail to the left.The two youngest enjoyed this play fire engine!And then, we were on the road again! We had originally planned to camp in the mountains that night and arrive home the next day, but the weather was cold and damp and we decided to push on for home. Towing a camper up Arthur’s Pass is a slightly risky proposition, with a 16% grade for several miles, but we made it. The van did heat up (we have some kind of radiator problem at the moment), so we stopped at an overlook at the top to cool off. That afforded quite a view of the Otira Viaduct, which we had just crossed.

This structure allows a waterfall to cross the road, just below the Viaduct.

This is the road we were to take next, going east across the Pass.

There were a lot of keas at the overlook. They are a wild mountain parrot, but not afraid of anything—and they love to eat rubber and plastic! We had to ward them off the open windows of the van so they wouldn’t eat the weatherstripping, but they did manage to eat part of the skylight of the camper. Naughty birds!

And then, we were over the Pass and on the dry side of the island. The scenery on this side is much different! This top picture is Castle Hill. We had hoped to stop there, but it was getting too late.

And, one more picture from the West Coast that I didn’t get stuck in anywhere else. As we drove the highway along the coast south of Hokitika, I was amazed at the trees. It was so obvious that the prevailing wind is from the sea!

And speaking of wind, we arrived home to find damage from strong winds while we were gone. The chimney above the kitchen had fallen on the roof, and broken the light directly below it, and a row of willow trees lost their tops. One tree fell on this shed. The fellows spent the day after we got home fixing broken things and cutting wood.

 

Franz Josef Glacier

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After we left Fox Glacier, on Friday evening of our trip, we tried to find a campground in the Fox Glacier Township. We knew it was supposed to rain, so we wanted a place where we could put part of the family in a cabin. The only place we could find cost about twice what we had paid the two previous nights! We decided to drive the half hour to Franz Josef and see if we could find a better place. The first place we checked out would have cost about three times as much, so we ended up at another of the chain we had tried in Fox Glacier. Still very expensive, but the best option we could find for that night. When the rain came down in torrents most of the night, leaving puddles all over, we were glad we had gotten a roof for the ones who were to have tented it! In the morning, then, we were thankful to see the sun, to dry out the camper before we closed it up. We were also treated to this glimpse of the mountains!

After breakfast, packing up, and family worship, we drove to the glacier. It was a much easier walk than at Fox Glacier, since the track hadn’t washed out. Again, the faster members of the family went ahead, and Mom and I walked at the pace of a two-year-old. Life is quite interesting, viewed from that perspective! Once again, I’ve borrowed most of these pictures from my daughter. I let our oldest boy use my camera, but her pictures are better. There were, once again, many waterfalls along the rocky path. Everything we walked on was once under the glacier! It is retreating rapidly. This is about where we slowpokes turned around. We got a good view of the glacier, and decided that if we didn’t want the rest of the crew to pass us up and have to wait for us, we’d better turn back. We got about halfway back, and suddenly some European tourists, passing us, exclaimed about the glacier. We turned to look, and the sun had come out on the ice! What a glorious sight! The picture Mom took, below, does not do it justice.

And, here are a few more pictures from closer-up.

Above: our oldest two, Esther and Seth. Below: Elijah, Simon, James.

At one point along the trail, they found a chunk of ice from the glacier. Esther had a plastic bag to protect her camera, so they brought the ice back to the van to show the rest of us.

Gayle and Joseph—on the top of the world!

 

 

Be prepared for danger!

A few of the boys raced back to the van ahead of the rest. I gave them permission to explore another trail, to the river below the glacier. They apparently took these pictures there. This is Elijah and Simon.

What a wonderful chance to explore a special part of God’s creation! We felt especially blessed when, just before all the explorers joined us back at the van, the heavens opened and rain poured most of the rest of the day! The weather had cleared just for a little while that morning, long enough to allow us to see the glacier.

Fox Glacier

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The day after we visited Pancake Rocks, on our West Coast trip, we drove several hours farther south to Fox Glacier. We enjoyed some stunning sights along the way, such as this wall of rock as we came into Greymouth,

and this road/rail bridge just south of Greymouth. (Well, maybe that one isn’t stunning—just unusual!)

This mailbox (apparently) was beside the bridge, where we had to stop to wait for oncoming traffic to cross the bridge before we did.

As it got near lunchtime, we needed a place to take a break and eat lunch, so we followed signs off the highway a mile or two to this spot by the bluest river I’ve ever seen. The blue comes from glacial melt, I believe. We ended up leaving in a hurry, though, because the toilets were closed for painting and some of us were desperate!

The road from Franz Josef Glacier, which we passed up that day, to Fox Glacier, was lined with incredible ferns!

We finally made it to the vicinity of Fox Glacier late in the afternoon. First we drove to a spot that promised views of the glacier, from the south side of the river. The road up to that spot was amazing enough:

A short walk through the rain forest took us to where we could, indeed, catch a glimpse of it!

We could just make out the end of the glacier at the bottom of that valley, about where the waterfalls come down.

The shape of this mountain was intriguing!

As we got back into the van, some of the boys asked if they could run down the road to where we had seen a sign for warm springs. Sure—good way to burn a bit of energy! They took off running, and even though it must have been a good mile or two, they beat us. Yes, it was downhill, which I’m sure is the reason they got there so fast. They were dipping their toes in when we arrived.

We then drove back to the main road and crossed to the north side of the river, where a sign indicated glacier access. This turned out to be a trail that led you to within something like 200 meters of the glacier, which is retreating fairly quickly. The first part of the trail had been wiped out by a slip, or landslide, and foot traffic was temporarily rerouted up a muddy, steep hillside, along a level, muddy, slippery trail, and back down another steep, muddy, slippery slope to the nice gravel path! Mom decided she shouldn’t try to tackle the climb, so she waited in the van. I wanted to see the glacier, so gave it a try, with the help of a walking stick my sweet second son found me—and made it through that worst part! The rest was easy, but I turned back, with our youngest, when we got to where I could see the glacier. Therefore, these pictures are Esther’s—thank you, Esther, for sharing. It was worth the hike to see the glacier!

My husband and Joseph, the second-youngest, at the glacier.

Pancake Rocks

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I had checked the tides for Pancake Rocks before we left on our trip, as someone told us once that high tide is the best time to go. High tide was to be around 4:00 the day we visited, so we aimed to get there around 3:30. We had been noticing that the waves were quite high, and the wind was from the north-west, so we were hoping for a good show. We really felt that God blessed us, because the blowholes were spouting quite high. What a sight to see!

The first thing we admired when we arrived, however, was the nikau palms. They are quite an unusual looking palm, and the southern-most palm in the world. We noticed some beginning to bloom, then saw that others had seed or fruit clusters hanging below the leaves. Then, we were tickled to see a wood pigeon helping himself to some of the fruit! After admiring the palms for a few minutes and poking our heads into the visitor center/gift shop, we went across the road (the main highway) to the rocks themselves. A lovely concrete path has been built through the rocks, with great viewing areas.

James, with his new camera! Funny thing about that is that he is camera-shy! Guess he likes to be on the other side. Isn’t he cute, though?At one of the first overlooks, we noticed how foamy the sea was. The water was extremely turbulent.The poor littlest boy was stuck going at the snail’s pace of his mom and grandma.

Mom and Esther admiring the rough seas.

This spot, a near-rectangle with walls all around, is in the middle of the rocks. It is aptly named the Surge Pool. Water comes in through two arches, one of which you can see here and the other is roughly under my feet from where I took the picture.

We finally got to the first blowhole! This is called Chimney Pots. If a wave of the right size comes in and ricochets off the rocks at the right angle, over and over again, it will burst up through a channel in the rocks and form a geyser. It was pretty amazing to see the path the waves had to take to get here—there were at least two right-angle corners they had to turn. The power the water still had when it reached this point was awe-inspiring.

I don’t remember what this spot was called, and I don’t know if there is an open channel to the sea or if the water comes through an archway, but it sure splashed up here!

My boys! Left-right: fourth (James), first (Seth), third (Elijah), fifth (Joseph), and second (Simon).

The Surge Pool, from the other side.

The sea on the north side of Pancake Rocks.

After we went all the way around, we decided to go back to Chimney Pot and enjoy the spectacle again. Our second boy found a spot on a bridge where the spray from the geysers blew over him. Not only did he get soaked (and later I noticed salt crusting his face!), but he lured a number of unsuspecting tourists to stand there long enough to get wet as well. I hear that he would ask them, “Do you like showers?” then keep them talking till it blew again!

I took a few videos to try to capture the experience. Of course, it isn’t anywhere as good as being there yourself, but these will give you a tiny glimpse of our experience.

This was definitely a highlight of our trip. We felt especially blessed when we were talking to a friend on the way home, who had been to Pancake Rocks a number of times, and he said he had never seen a show such as we described.

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!

Westport = Coal

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The first town we stopped in on our West Coast trip was Westport. Westport is a historical coal-mining town, and there is still a lot of coal shipped out of there! It is interesting to look at the cuts along the road; most of them have a coal seam in them. We learned a lot about coal mining. And, an interesting side note—the motel/campground where we spent the night heats their water with coal! My second boy saw the owner, in the morning, loading coal into a large hopper in a building next to the kitchen/toilet block. He asked if the man buys coal by the truckload. No; he digs it out of his own private mine by the truckload!

The first place we went sight-seeing in Westport was an accidental find. We were trying to get out of town to the north to go to the Denniston Incline, and ended up at Tip End, which turned out to be a breakwall we could drive out on, way out to the end of the Buller River. There is a breakwall on each side of the river mouth, forming a harbor for shipping coal. We enjoyed watching the enormous waves roll past and break on the bar at the river mouth. The end of the breakwall doubles as a memorial to sailors lost at sea, from Westport, and some drowned right there at the sandbar.

Mom and Esther

This is  Nathan,  James,  and  Simon.

After spending a little while enjoying the waves out there, we finally did find our way out of town to the Denniston Incline. For about 88 years, until it closed down in 1967, the Denniston Incline was used to transport coal from mines on top of a very high plateau down to sea level, to be shipped to Westport by train and then on ships. It was only one of at least a half dozen inclines, all of which seem to have operated similarly. This one is in the process of being restored. The basic idea was that coal was transported to the edge of the plateau, either in huge “buckets” on aerial tracks or, later, by truck, then put into Q wagons, which are train cars. These Q wagons were run down a very steep track, by gravity, falling 510 meters in 1.7 kilometers! There were two sections of the track, with a brake at the top of each. Once at the bottom, the Q wagons were unhooked, then hooked up to a train for the trip to Westport. Each full wagon, as it went down, pulled an empty one back up to the top. That must have taken some coordination; a lot of places, there was only room for a single track! They obviously had it timed so that the full and empty wagons passed in the places where there was room for two tracks. We really enjoyed walking around the site, although it would have been much better if the weather was better. It was raining and sleeting and cold during this visit! That is not uncommon weather there, though.

A view on the way up to the top. The road is not for the faint of heart! Very steep, and a lot of winding back and forth. I noticed a sign at the bottom warning that this road is used seven days a week by mining trucks.

The top of the incline, and looking down it. Not too good a picture, but remember what I said about the weather?!

After the incline was shut down, the buildings burned, and these ruins are what is left. The tracks in the upper center lead to the top of the incline; you can see it start to go down.

Gayle and the boys did more exploring than we females. I’m not sure what this was; James has his own camera and he took this picture. Edited to add: I have now been told that this was a track that led up to the mouth of a mine. It had rails on it that trolleys of coal were pushed along to take them to the top of the incline, and there are apparently even trolleys left there!

The next day, the weather was great—and we toured the Coaltown Museum in Westport! We should have done that the first day, and gone up to Denniston the second day. Ah, hindsight. It was quite interesting to see the exhibits, though, after having toured Denniston already.

This is what we saw from where we parked to visit the museum!Not sure who took this picture, but I thought it was cute. Daddy carried the youngest from the van to the museum.A few pictures from the museum: Top is a Q wagon at the actual slope at the steepest part of the incline. Third is the brake drum used to stop the wagons, and bottom is our youngest in front of one of the small wagons they used to pull coal out of the mines.

All in all, it was a very educational time we spent in Westport! The museum is very well done, and economical for even a large family. We would love to spend more time at the Denniston Incline, and I look forward to seeing further restoration there. A lot has been done since we were there four and a half years ago.

More about the trip to follow!

Off on a Holiday!

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We don’t get to take very many trips, which is fine with me, being a homebody, but ever since May we’ve been planning to go to the West Coast while Mom is here. Gayle has a very hard time getting permission to take time off from work, even though he is legally entitled to it, so we were excited a couple of months ago when his request for a week right now was finally approved—after waiting three or four months for his boss to make the decision! We borrowed a neighbor’s pop-top camper again, and Wednesday morning last week packed it and the van with all we thought we’d need for a week of camping, and then took off!

We made it across the range of hills directly to the west of us, and passed through the little village of Waiau, then crossed the Waiau River on this long one-lane bridge. It’s a good thing it has a passing bay in the middle, as someone was coming toward us and had to pull off for us to pass! Then, we went up through wilder and wilder hills towards Lewis Pass.

We saw snow on the high peaks as we drove toward the mountains, and then as we got closer could see that it was snowing at that moment, up high! When we reached the top of the pass, there was actually snow on the ground! We haven’t seen snow up close for over two years, so we stopped a few minutes to let the boys check it out. Our youngest had never touched snow, and he was thrilled. His biggest brother was very happy to help him investigate this new stuff.

The terrain changed as we went down the west side of the pass.

We had to laugh at the snowplow we saw—rather a contrast to the ones in Michigan! It had come over the pass behind us.

When we reached Reefton, we could tell something was different from home—we smelled coal smoke in the air! Apparently, that’s what people heat with there. We saw a coal mine near the township (village), and a train of coal cars on a siding.

Soon, we were driving along the Buller River. There is a pretty wild gorge that the river, and the road, go through. One place, a road had to be carved out of the cliff. As you can see, there is only one lane! Quite the engineering feat.

Nelson Trip, Part Four: On the Way Home

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The trip home seemed to take a long time—much longer than going! Is that because everyone was tired? Especially the littlest was sick and tired of sitting in his carseat. We did stop a couple of times to enjoy the scenery. The first stop was at an overlook at the Hope Saddle, which everyone agreed wasn’t really worth stopping at. There were some beautiful views, but it was mostly trees in every direction.

We did have a surprise there, though: two guinea pigs in the bush! The boys tried to catch them (of course) but I was not sad when they did not succeed!

A couple of bored boys took pictures as we drove on from there through the mountains.

The highlight of the day was Maruia Falls, where we ate our picnic lunch. Notice the bark/wood floating in the water? It was slowly swirling in a circle.