Trip with Mom & Dad: Day 10 - Auckland

January 5, 2014

Today is our second Sunday of the trip. Like I mentioned before, we had walked by a church building right next to our hotel so we were able to easily check the time we should attend. We decided on the 9:00 ward rather than the 1:00 ward, which turned out to be a very good thing because the 1:00 ward was a Samoan ward and we wouldn't have understood a word!

As we walked into church we ran into the Elders we had seen on the street the evening before.  Which I realize now, I forgot to mention in yesterday's post. We saw a couple of Elder missionaries as we were heading back to the car after visiting the Sky Tower and struck up a conversation with them. We learned that one of the Elders was from Utah and that he had known Brian's cousin, Clayton Williams, who returned home from his mission in the New Zealand Auckland mission just a few months earlier. So that was pretty cool.

Church services were wonderful - not only did we attend some great meetings, we met family members of several of our ward members (the Sateli's and the Dennison's) back in Christchurch. It was almost like being in the Riccarton Ward!

After church we decided we would go on a little scenic drive north of Auckland on the 'Twin Coast Discovery Highway'. The heat dissipated into rain just about the time we started driving, but we began the journey anyway.

Our first accomplishment of the afternoon was finding the freeway entrance. I hadn't really thought about looking at the map before we got in the car, and boy was that a mistake. The entrance was not in the same location as the exit we had taken, so after a few wrong guesses we finally looked at the map and got headed in the right direction. I'm pretty sure this was only serious navigational blunder, but we can leave it up to the others to comment haha.

Sadly, the bad weather didn't really result in any good photos of the scenery.  This is about the best one (which you can tell was taken while we were moving and raindrops on the window!)

We finally made it out to the South Head of Kaipara Harbour, which is a narrow strip of land protecting the harbor from the Tasman Sea. In area, Kaipara is actually one of the largest harbors in the world - covering 366 square miles at high tide.  We stopped at Shelly Beach because I thought my parents should see at least one beach while we in New Zealand (I don't count the New Brighton pier in Christchurch).  To give you an idea of where we were, I've included a couple of maps.

This first map actually shows where we are on the North Island, and directly north of Auckland

This little map is a blow up of the harbor. The black dot between Parakai and South Head, where it juts out into the harbor from the west side is where Shelly Beach is located 

Well, since it was a rainy day, mom fell asleep while we were driving and I'm pretty sure dad took a little nap as well. It was raining when we arrived at Shelly Beach, so they declined to join us on the beach itself. So Brian and I had a little fun on our own!

Ahh- caught a wave!

Tip-toeing back to shore :)

Getting bombarded by waves on the way to the rock - not a good way to stay dry!

And I made it - but not without getting drenched haha

A small bit of proof that mom & dad were there...

My pants were completely soaked after!!! That made for a fun ride home

I tried to capture the docks behind Brian - stupid weather washing everything out!

Well, that was about all the excitement we could handle for the day. We didn't even finish the little loop we had identified on the 'Twin Coast Discovery Highway'. But that's okay, we still had a pretty good time.  Also, we have a 7am flight to Australia in the morning which means getting to the airport at 5am. Super fun!!!