One final trip - Day 8 (It's Paradise!)

January 3, 2015

Today is the last day of our final touring in New Zealand. We were exhausted, but had some fun things to find before making the long drive back to Christchurch.

Wanaka
We spent the night in Wanaka. Lake Wanaka is a very popular place in both summer (for camping at the lake) and winter (for skiing), so we thought we should at least pass through once before heading home. So, to give you an idea of this pretty little town, this is what we got to look at while eating breakfast.

Same picture with myself inserted haha.

Such gorgeous scenery

Paradise
Yes, that really is the name of the town we headed to after breakfast. To call it a town is a bit of an overstatement, it's more like a village. We were on a dirt road for several km before we actually made it there, but we managed it!

An interesting fact about this area is that part of the TV series Top of Lake was filmed here. This is where the women's commune was based. And nearby Glenorchy, which we drove through but didn't have time to stop and take pictures was the basis for the town of Laketop.

I think that dog may be coming for Ike!

Ike makes me laugh - he's excited to be out of the car

The next picture is of a famous house here in Paradise called Arcadia house. Arcadia is Greek for Paradise, and this house was originally built in 1906 by Joseph Fenn to attract his fiancee to New Zealand. Now that's a wedding present! Anyway, this farm is private property, but the Arcadia Station farm was the location for Beorn's house in the Hobbit movies. You can only access the location through a tour group, so we missed out on this spot.

A little farther down the road, we found ourselves at Dan's Paddock in the shadow of Mt Earnslaw. Mt Earnslaw was used to portray part of the Misty Mountains. It was fun to find one of the real peaks used for the Misty Mountains, although you'll see from early posts (back in 2013) we dubbed several mountains the misty mountains because of the low hanging fog that covers many mountains throughout the day.

This area also boasts a beautiful beech forest which was used to film several of the Lothlorien scenes. At the edge of the forest is where the Fellowship entered Lothlorien in the The Fellowship of the Rings.

So ethereal!

Inside the beech forest, imagining Lothlorien

"I just want to go home!"

Lake Wakatipu
This marks the end of our time in Paradise and it's time to start the long drive back to Christchurch. The drive back towards Queenstown followed beautiful Lake Wakatipu. Nostalgia set in again and we stopped for a couple quick scenic pictures. We couldn't have asked for a better day :)

Cromwell
What luck! As we were driving home, we noticed the last our of "big things". Even though Brian was eager to get home before dark he kindly obliged me for a picture with the giant peaches.

Twizel
We were in need of some petrol and snacks, so we stopped in Twizel. We also made our final LoTR stop of the day. The largest battle scene filmed in the LoTR trilogy was the battle on the Pelennor Fields. the grassy fields and snow-covered mountains in the background fit the description from the book perfectly. There's not too much snow today because it's summer, but it worked at a different time of year. I'm also enjoying my ice cream!

As we headed out of Twizel we passed by Lake Pukaki one last time (see The Saxtons vs. the Stars for more details of this lake). Brian wanted one last picture of Mt Cook given that we could see it today. Not too bad for taking it from a moving car! (Don't worry, I was driving)

And that sadly concludes our final trip around New Zealand. It has been an amazing and wounderful journey that we are sad to see coming to an end. We've drive about 3500km (about 2175 miles) over the past 8 days. Woah that's a lot of driving - and 100% by me. One funny thing that happened due to spending so much time in the car was Ike found the perfect spot to sit in - sort of on Brian's lap between Brian and the door. Ike loved that spot so much he insists on sitting there even now that we are back in Utah in different cars. Lol.

One final trip - Day 7 (Part 2: Te Waewae Bay to Queenstown)

January 2, 2015

After our quick exploration of Invercargill, we continued our drive along the Southern Scenic Tourist Route on our way up to Queenstown. We started off by driving due west toward Te Waewae Bay, where we found ourselves with some more photo opportunities.

Gemstone Beach
Brian saw on the map a point of interest called gemstones on beach. We thought that sounded interesting and pulled off the road to investigate. A little sign gave us an introduction into the name of the beach (it's official name is Orepuki Beach). Due to the constant storms in this area, the beach is ever changing, where stones will be piled high one day and then covered with sand the next. Some of the stone that have been found on this beach include: hyrdrogrossular, jasper, garnet sands, rodingite, epidote, idiocrase, and sapphire.

This picture of Brian shows all the stones that get left in sand. Some of them were more polished than others. We grabbed a few of the larger green rocks as they reminded us of green stone. There were others there more serious about finding certain stones - one guy had a bucket and shovel!

In addition to the beautiful stones, the beach was quite interesting in and of itself. This was a great little stop that we were happy we made.

First, there was this cool looking cave/shelter. We were pretty sure someone was living in it, so we didn't walk up to it.

There was a little inlet of water behind the beach that had calm waters in huge contrast to the surf hitting the beach from the other side

Ike left cute little paw prints in the wet sand.

Suspension Bridge
Our next stop was at a historical suspension bridge near Clifden built in 1899. The cool thing about this bridge is that it still has its historic wooden decking. 

Luckily, we drove out of the storm by the time we reached this spot but the negative effect was that Brian's allergies kicked in with vigor. Needless to say, I got to see this location by myself. My selfies with a real camera aren't that great haha.

Rakatu Wetlands
What are wetlands you ask? A wetland is an area saturated with water either permanently or seasonally and takes on a distinct ecosystem. The Rakatu Wetlands are maintained by the Waiau Trust are for the benefit of native fish, waterfoul and protected bird species. This is another pretty spot I got to explore by myself. I took a little hike up to a look out and got to look around an incredible valley. The huge dragonflies were the only drawback to my little nature walk.

Proof I was there. That hill behind me was steeper than it looked - man it winded me!

Before getting back on the road, I also got a few nice pictures of the mountain ranges on either side of the wetlands.

Takitinu Mountains

Let's be honest, this picture is of this cool cloud. Still deciding between an alligator or a really mad dog.

Mount Titiroa in Fiordland National Park

Lake Manapouri
This is New Zealand's second deepest lake (1,457 feet deep!). But it has a really sad story about its formation in Maori legend. According to the story, the lake was formed from the tears of two sisters, Moturua and Koronae. Koronae journeyed deep into the forest one day and became stranded after a fall. Moturua went looking for Koronae only to discover that she could not be rescued. So Moturua stayed with Koronae until they both died and their tears formed Lake Manapouri. Manapouri means anxious or sorrowful heart because of the grief of the two sisters.

View of the lake with what I believe are the Cathedral Peaks in the background

Lake Manapouri was to be our last stop of the day that included pictures. We reached Queenstown around dinner time and thought about going to Fergburger's, but the line was out the door and we were way to hungry to wait. However, I did find myself a jacket - hooray! We didn't take pictures as we already had several from our trip last year with Mom & Dad. So we headed to our accommodation because my allergies were getting as bad as Brian's. Plus, we just needed some rest - we had gone over 1,000km in just two days!

One final trip - Day 7 (Part 1: Invercargill)

January 2, 2015

Today we spent a little time exploring Invercargill, since Brian served part of his mission here back in 1999. We drove around and found the flat where he had lived as well as the church building he attended. Once again, his memory was superb!

We also couldn't leave without visiting Queens Park, an amazing park and botanical garden about 80 hectares in size (equivalent to about 200 acres). I had no idea how large it was when Brian said we should visit and it took us a while to get through it. Sadly for me, it was quite cold and I was still without a jacket at this point due to my bad packing for our southern trip.

There were many fun and beautiful things to see. We started off with the animal enclosures because Brian didn't remember this part when he was here 15 years ago. So it was all new and exciting! Our first stop was to see the red deer with their velvet antlers, which I really didn't know anything about. So I took a picture to introduce them to you as well.

Brian says a lot of athletes take velvet supplements, but I just think that sounds weird.

Nemo

I guess the baby hasn't been named yet...

We also stopped to check out the wallabies. This picture is for you Richard Webb - and yes, we are still in New Zealand and not Australia!

Well timed pic of the guy in the background!

 This little guy took us back to the fun times at Willowbank Reserve in Christchurch. If you haven't done so before, I recommend you read my post from taking my parents there in December 2013. We had a blast feeding the animals there. Ah the nostalgia is setting in again!

After walking through the animal enclosures, we headed over to the rotunda. The walk was quite pretty, but it also started to rain so our walk became a little more fast-paced.

This would be a great venue for special occasions!

 There are also several sculptures around the park. Brian took a liking to this first one, and wanted a picture. I know you are all shocked that he wanted to be in a picture, but it's true!

We also took a picture of the sea lions because it reminded him of a picture Brian took of one of his mission companions (you know who are Wade Allred).

We also took a walk through the rose garden until it started to rain a little bit more heavily. I'll put extra pictures of the roses at the end of this post.

But this time, I was absolutely frozen so we started making our way back to the car. But we took a couple of final pictures on our way back.

A pretty little pond

Now that's a tall tree!

Brian said these cool pink and purple flowers are all over Invercargill, but I haven't seen them before. They may just be may new favorite flower given they are my two favorite colors!

This post is getting a little long, so I'll write about the rest of this day in a separate post. My mom loves pictures of flowers, so here are a few more that we took.

Daisies in the middle of summer! Who knew?