Welcome to Winter Wonderland

Here are some fun photos from our family Christmas ski days up at Alpine Meadows.  It was a real treat to get to take the boys skiing with their biggest fan clubs (Nana, Auntie Megan, Uncle Mino and Wes).  Josh got a new ski leash and the boy is on speed!  He is fearless, honestly, the little man will ski straight down anything.  He is super cute with his little tongue sticking out as he concentrates and his little legs holding steady as he plows on.  I think we're in for trouble when the boy learns out how to turn.  Ben is also doing well, getting a lot more confident and happy to plow on by himself.  Dan and I both got in some great runs, including some fresh snow.  I told Dan the last time I'd skiied 4 days in a row was over 6 years ago, what a great Christmas present.

7904 kilometers later

 We knew this was going to be an adventure, but I'm not sure we really knew what kind of adventure we were going to have.  In the end we traveled 7904 kilometers (4911 miles), slept in our tent 47 nights and visited countless playgrounds throughout the country.  We sampled wine, visited museums, went to a dozen swimming pools and built a number of sand castles.  We had our share of meltdowns and only one van breakdown.  We saw all sorts of animals, penguins and dolphins in their natural habit, while lion, tigers and giraffes in their non-natural environment.  We've read some books, baked some pizzas, eaten countless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and taken 1,791 photos.  And now we've packed our 92 kilos (202 pounds) of official checked luggage (let's hope they don't charge for the car seats!) and are trying to figure out how many hours of movies we can watched between New Zealand and California.  Ben declared today that his favorite thing he's done in his entire life was the campervan adventure.  I'd say it was a success.

Taupo

After we all sort of fell apart in Raglan we decided that we needed to take it easy for our last full week in New Zealand.  We had previously organized a rendezvous with our friend Nicole, who lives in Wellington, and the farthest north she could drive was Taupo, so we decided to park it in Taupo.  Since we'd already been to Taupo on this road trip we took the non-tourist agenda and spent the week going to the park, the library, the pool, the gym and the Volcano Center.  Dan took the opportunity to do the Tongariro Crossing, see previous post and go mountain biking with Nicole.  We had a nice time hanging out in Taupo, not a bad place to recollect after many weeks on the road.

Tongariro Alpine Crossing

Dan spent his day hiking the classic New Zealand great walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.  The 19 kilometer walk goes through the Tongariro National Park, home to some of New Zealand's active volcanoes.  Dan described the walk as like "walking on the moon."  His alarm went off at 4:45am this morning so he could catch the shuttle to the park.  The hike took him 6 1/2 hours and he was back at the holiday park by 5pm for dinner.  Our day seemed rather tame in comparison, a trip the library, the barber shop and a treat at a local cafe.  

Raglan

We've spent 3 nights in Raglan, a cute little surf town west of Hamilton.  The town has the southern California vibe, surf shops, expensive art and design shops and lots of cafes.  While we didn't go surfing, we enjoyed the chill vibe and the sunshine.

a to z

Here is a collage of Ben's alphabet project.  We're trying to get ourselves organized for his new school in Nevada City.  (We've been a bit slack on this trip in the terms of "formal" education, plenty of real life fun, but... )  So for this project Ben wrote out the alphabet as a treasure map and then we walked around the holiday park looking for all the letters.  I checked them off the "map" and he took a picture with his camera.

Mommy's Super Heroes

These two cuties make me laugh.  Here they are dressed in their Mommy's Super Hero pjs.  We were camped at the holiday park in Raglan, a surf town southwest of Auckland.  They certainly do keep us on our toes!

Auckland Zoo

The Auckland Zoo had been recommended to me by a number of people, so we were all keen to go check it out.  Our first attempt to visit the zoo had been rained out, but thankfully we had another opportunity on the day we had to take Bertie to the airport.  All of us were impressed with the variety of animals, the natural environments for the animals (okay well natural for a zoo setting) and the ease of navigating the zoo.  I enjoyed the lack of commercial feel to the zoo, there weren’t snack shops and gift shops around every corner.  Instead of gift shops there were info stands set up around the park with various environmental information, educating the number of school groups in the park.  I think the vote at the end of the day was that the monkeys were our favorite part.

Rotarua

The woman who checked us into the holiday park here in Rotarua went through the list of amenities, “tent site here, toilets and showers here, laundry here, swimming pool here, playground, boiling mud pit, hangi, steam cooker, access to the hot water beach….” I was still stuck on the boiling mud pit part, which happens to be located right next to the playground. Only in Rotarua is thermal activity like this so casual and every day.  When I took a walk through the city this morning I couldn’t believe the amount of boiling creeks, steaming rocks and amazing boiling mud pits. 

Rotarua has aquired the nick name “Rotavegas” for the sheer number of ways one can spend money in this town.  We didn’t hit the jackpot, per say, but we did play a few choices games.  Dan has been asking to do the luge since we did a mini campervan adventure to Queenstown earlier this year.  The boys thoroughly enjoyed their thrill seeking adventure, while Bertie and I enjoyed the view from the top of the gondola.  We also visited the Rotarua Museum and a thermal area located next to the events centre parking lot.  This afternoon we went to see the Paradise Valley Springs Wildlife Park.  The boys played at the playground here at the holiday park, but thankfully stayed out of the boiling mud pit.

Papamoa Beach Jumping Pillow

Jumping pillows are too much fun!  Bigger and better then a trampoline.  As you can see in these photos we all took part in the jumping fun.  Behind Dan you can see Norie and our tent, so we didn't have to go far to enjoy the two jumping pillows at the Papamoa Beach Holiday park.

Hot Water Beach

Hot Water Beach sounded like a perfect place for us to visit.  Two hours before and after low tide you can dig a hole in the sand and create an individual hot tub on the beach with the natural hot springs in the beach.  Unfortunately we didn’t time our visit to the beach with the low tide.  But that being said we still enjoyed a lovely visit, some good sand castle building and an exploration of the cave at the end of the beach.  The surf was up and a number of surfers were out enjoying the big waves.  I could sit in my lawn chair under our red and white stripped umbrella for hours and just be.  But the kids were soaking wet and we had more places to explore, so we packed up the van and headed north… next time we’ll get the tide right.

Pauanui

This is where we spent 4 nights in a holiday house on the Coromandel.  Pauanui is a lovely little beach side town with a stunning beach, which lucky for us, was just out our back door.  We happened to be right next to the airstrip, which was surprisingly busy, guess folks must fly down to their beach houses from Auckland?  Can you see in the photo on the bottom left that Josh has his sand shovel tucked into his shirt?  Armed and dangerous sand castle building machine....

Thanksgiving

This is my 6^th Thanksgiving in New Zealand and I still think it’s a bit odd to celebrate an American holiday in New Zealand.  Thankfully this year we had Dan’s mom, Bertie, with us to help celebrate.  We rented a holiday house in the town of Paunanui on the Coromandel Peninsula and it was a very relaxed celebration.  Dan was able to find a frozen turkey breast roast in Auckland.  We tried to stick to the traditional menu, but I’ll admit we didn’t go the whole nine yards.  We had roasted potatoes, kumara and pumpkin, garlic bread, salad, turkey with cranberry stuffing and gravy.  We toasted the meal with our last bottle of Rippon Pinot Noir from Wanaka.  We decided to just have Hokey Pokey ice cream for dessert, which I know is a bit of a crime since Thanksgiving is really about the pies.  What I love about having a destination getaway holiday, when no one else is celebrating with you, is that you can have a relaxed stroll down the beach or go visit the local library and read your children some books, because the Kiwis think it’s just a normal Thursday.   My next favorite bit is that fact that I made my divine left over Thanksgiving sandwich and then ate it the next day under an umbrella while sitting at the beach.

Auckland Museum

We picked up Dan's mom at the Auckland Airport yesterday and after a small issue with the campervan (a small diesel leak that needs to be repaired) were off tooling around Auckland city in our rented minivan.  We went to the Auckland Museum because I had taken the boys last year and Ben declared that it was his favorite museum in the whole galaxy.  The boys loved the volcano exhibit and the weird and wacky area.

Matheson Bay

Here are a few photos from our lovely stay at our friend Scott's family bach in Matheson Bay.  We pitched our tent on the deck, because one of the bedrooms was inside and the other one was outside, so we "camped" at the bach.  I love that the bach had the classic Kiwi feel to it, toilet out in the backyard, small cozy rooms cluttered with dusty books and dated magazines, cans and supplies on the shelves (some of them of them rather old, i.e. the Marmite jar the expired in 2001).  But the bach was a 5 minute walk to the beach with a fabulous ocean view in a quiet little area.  For traveling fools like ourselves, we really enjoyed having a base spot for a few days while we explored the Warkworth area.  The photos of Dan and the beer are from his tasting kit from the Sawmill Brewery in Leigh.  I liked that when I told the owner that since I keep dragging the family to wineries that I should let Dan take in a brewery and she replied, "yeah I think about 10 wineries to 1 brewery should be about the ratio."  While in Matheson Bay we went to the beach, the Farmer's Market, the Warkworth Museum, the public library, a few small walks...  I read an entire book...  Perfect!

Brick Bay Wines and Sculpture Tour

I keep dragging the family to different wineries through out New Zealand, but today we stumbled upon a real gem.  Brick Bay Wines and Sculpture Trail calls itself “art & wine entwined” and in addition to the super modern glass house tasting room suspended over a small pond there’s a 2 kilometer sculpture trail.  The trail leads past ponds, through forests and up and down several sets of stairs.  Some sculptures are hidden in the natural environment, while others stand proudly on the side of the hill. Ben is fairly keen on sculptures and really enjoyed the treasure hunt experience through the amazing gardens, constantly checking his map to see where we were on the path.  Dan and Josh stayed behind and Dan took a glass of their red wine to the sand box next to the playground. When we finished the sculpture tour I did a wine tasting and had a lovely chat with the woman working, as we happened to be the only people there at the time.  It was another fabulous winery experience, if you are every outside of Warkworth I would definitely say go check it out.  They say that the sculptures change fairly often (as they are all for sale), so it would be something you could go back and revisit more then once.

Building sand castle on 90-mile beach

We spent 2 nights at a holiday park in Ahipara at the southern part of 90-mile beach.  The first day we were there was hot, but the second day was overcast and kinda cold.  We still managed to get some beach fun in and if you look closely you'll see that Josh was sitting in the puddle of water.  We've acquired a few more sand toys and are perfecting our sand castle building skills.

Cape Reinga

We’ve made it to the end of the road and looked over the edge.  Dan had said before the trip that his goal was to go from the very bottom to the very top.  I didn’t expect Point Reinga to be so beautiful.  I’m still in awe of the amazing views we keep discovering around all these twists and turns.  We’ve driven a lot of miles, but we keep finding million dollar views.  The sea was an amazing green and blue color and you could see the waves where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean met, even on a calm day like today.  The photos don’t do justice to the special spot, so book your airplane tickets now and go have a look for yourself!  It’s a bit of a drive, but definitely worth it.

Bay of Islands

It's another e-postcard, this time from our lovely stay in Bay of Islands.  We realized, after a few too many meltdowns and a few wrong turns (literally, we drove through Auckland and yes I will accept some blame for why we got on the freeway the wrong direction) that we needed a break from our traveling.  So we rented a little 2 bedroom house at a holiday park in the Bay of Islands and it was lovely.  We needed those lovely things we all take for granted- like doors, couches, dining room tables...  It was nice to have a little extra room.  Fun to be a real tourist and do things like expensive boat rides.  In addition to the boat trip we made some sand castles on the beach, took a tour of the Waitangi Treaty grounds and played at the holiday park.  Great time had by all...  I will confess that the boys said their favorite thing one of the days was "watching tv."

Waipu Cove

Waihi Beach Jumping Pillow

Many of these photos are a bit out of focus, but I thought I’d include them in this collage so you can see the family fun we had on the jumping pillow.  These photos are from the Waihi Beach Holiday Park, one of the plushest holiday parks we’ve stayed in to date.  If you’re in the Bay of Plenty and need a nice holiday park to stay in this one fits the bill.  Not only does it have the normal jumping pillow, playground, 25 meter swimming pool, hot tub, family room complete with toys and an indoor play structure, a gym, beach access…  get this my favorite thing—the magazine stand in the laundry room full of trash mags! 

Ohope Beach

Greetings from Ohope Beach!  The Bay of Plenty is stunning, beautiful beach (I think the book says it’s 13 kilometers long).  We’re camped at the Ohope Beach Top 10 holiday park, which is lovely.  The boys are in heaven because in addition to the normal fun (game room, trampolines, playground) it also has a beach volleyball court (aka sandbox) and a pool with 2 hydroslides. That’s just what’s at the holiday park, it’s also on the beach.  I love that New Zealand beaches rarely have any people on them, so it feels like you’ve got the whole place to yourself.  I posted on my Facebook status that our travel agenda was “pool and beach” which was perfect.  We never even got in the car.  For a road trip that’s covering a fair bit of ground days where you don’t drive at all a real treat.  I will confess that the swimming pool was freezing, but the boys braved it for a brief play.  Dan jumped in the ocean, which he declared to be at least 5 degrees warmer then the pool.  I got to take a walk along the beach in the afternoon, always a treat to get some solo exercise time in.  We finished the day off with Dan’s stellar pizza.   

Wainui Beach & Waiotahi Beach

Here's a cute snapshot from our brief trip to Wainui Beach in Gisbourne.  My friend Cathie said we had to go, so we took the detour, checked it out, but it was cold and very windy, so we packed it in quickly.  Lucky for us the drive over to the Bay of Plenty gave us more opportunity to hang out on the beach with some sunshine!  The boys used a milk container to help create this awesome sandcastle.  Love creative thinking with limited supplies.