Welcome to our Blog. Our latest entry always comes up first...
Click this link if you want to start at the beginning:
FIRST BLOG ENTRY
If you want to start at the beginning of our trip:
START OF TRIP
If you want to see the story of our trip from South Carolina
(where we bought the boat)
to Lake Ontario Click this link:
SOUTH CAROLINA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Click this link if you want to start at the beginning:
FIRST BLOG ENTRY
If you want to start at the beginning of our trip:
START OF TRIP
If you want to see the story of our trip from South Carolina
(where we bought the boat)
to Lake Ontario Click this link:
SOUTH CAROLINA
Well, it is New Years Day here in New Zealand, and the temperature is around 20c with mostly cloudy sky's... not really the Christmas/New Years we grew up with...
We are thrilled to have our youngest daughter, Kelly with us and her life-long friend, Kristina here with us. They arrived a day late, but we have had a great time so far...
On Christmas Eve we attended a cruisers pot luck last night and enjoyed meeting a bunch of people we had seen around, but hadn't got to know...
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| Food and presents.... who could ask for more.... |
As soon as the girls arrived Shelley organized their great New Zealand Adventure...
On Boxing Day we celebrated Christmas with the girls and our friend, Tom. Shelley made a full on Christmas dinner, complete with turkey and all the trimmings...
The very next day we went hiking with the girls....
On December 28th we headed for HOBBITON! The place where the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit were filmed... What an adventure! Even Shelley and I (who are a little naive on all things Hobbits) really enjoyed the tour.
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| Shelley's favorite souvenir.... |
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| Our new mat for the boat! |
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| First in line for the tour! |
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| Look... the girls are the same size as Hobbits! |
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| Unfortunately, our generator never made it with the girls... Here I am working with a bunch of people to get it from Chicago to here... Thank you SO much to our angel, Susan in Chicago who doesn't even know us, Shelley connected with Susan on a woman's sailing Facebook group. She went to O hare Airport, picked up the generator, took it to the Honda dealership to get the fuel/oil removed and re-boxed, so it could finish it's trip to New Zealand... It is not here yet, but our other angel, Angelique from United Airlines will make it happen next week! |
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| Look! We all fit! |
From Hobbiton, we went to the National Park. And YES it SNOWED the day we arrived!
We stayed in a Hostel... rustic, but nice, and the only affordable accommodation we could find in New Zealand...
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| Yes, it was COLD! |
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| Shelley pointing to "MOUNT DOOM" |
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| Some incredible beauty! |
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| The girls hiked almost 20 kilometers over the volcano! |
They don't mess around here in NZ... Almost all roads outside city/town limits are 100kph (65mph)!
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| They may be 20, but not yet "all grown up!" |
Our first road trip ended in Auckland where we celebrated New Years Eve... The girls got all dressed up and explored Sky City in downtown Auckland... I played a poker tournament and got 5th... A great night for everyone...
