Along the way

Barbara Has returned home. Weather and flood derailed the week RVing in Australia. David is doing train travel across Australia now. Decided to give you a final message and pictures on our time in New Zealand. After leaving the thermal pools in the Waikite Valley we headed north past Auckland. Rained most of the day, but turned nice as we approached Whangarei on the northeast coast of the North Island. Relaxed the rest of the day in a very nice, small, family-owned campground located only about 500 m from a beautiful waterfall. Waited until the next day to walk to the waterfall and then on to a Kauri tree forest. Kauri trees are very old (many 500 years or older), but disappearing in New Zealand with only a few protected areas left. We should not have ... read more

After leaving the glacier we headed north along the west coast of the South Island stopping at Greymouth and then Westport. Our overnight at Greymouth was right on the beach, beautiful sunset to enjoy. At Westport we took a short hike to a fur seal colony on rocky outcroppings. Babies born in November so got to see some young seals as well as adults. Ate lunch at a wonderful seaside cafe and then took another short walk to an old lighthouse. We then headed inland going through Murchison and then heading north to the Nelson area. Our stay at Murchison was just for one night. Huge yellow jackets swarmed our RV (guess they liked the bright green) so didn't even sit outside. Took a short hike the following day up the mountain to see some the ... read more

Montana girls with January birthdays usually celebrate their birthdays with snowstorms or blizzards. This year I got to celebrate mine at the beach. After leaving Auckland we headed southwest to Waitomo Caves. The next day we drove to a small coastal town, Kawhui. We had to cross a small mountain range so drove 20+ miles on a narrow and very windy 2 lane road. Drove through a lot of forest as we crossed the mountains. The forest was a combination of large trees and huge tall ferns, almost like palm trees only with fern leaves on the top. Has a very ancient Jurassic Park look to the area. We kept waiting for the dangerous raptors to appear, but they never did. Worth it when we got to the other side. The beach in Kawhui is black ... read more

We are getting ready to head to New Zealand and Australia. We leave on December 31 so will start the new year in a new country. We will be traveling by RV as we do in Europe. Should be fun (or scary) driving on the wrong side of the road. Our grandniece, Paige, will be traveling with us which will be fun. We will spend most of January in New Zealand and then move on to Australia for about 10 days working our way north to the Great Barrier Reef. I will return home on February 3 and David and Paige will continue on a train trip across Australia and then on to Thailand and Vietnam returning to the US in March. The next entry will be from New Zealand. Happy New Year to all of ... read more

We have had our canal boat for 5 days now and it has been an amazing experience. Very relaxing. We are on the Llangollen Canal which starts in England just south of Chester which is just south of Liverpool. We started around mid-point on the canal going northwest into Wales to the canals starting point at Llangollen. The countryside is beautiful moving from rolling pasture to hilly, wooded country. The canal goes along a ridge as you move up it. The stretch from Gobowen where we started to Llangollen includes 2 locks (no lockmaster so self operated), 2 tunnels (one 491 meters long) and 2 aquaducts (one short and with a ledge on both sides and one longer one with just a metal lip on one side and a walkway on the other). The aquaducts are ... read more