Compass Rose

After celebrating Friday the 13th. twice and arriving 4 hours earlier than we left. We have arrived safely home. Kudos to Maggie our farm sitter for such a wonderful job and to our friends that handled a farm emergency that happened. We arrived to a normal happy farm and critters. It is a wonderful feeling that we could go on a vacation of our life time and have so many friends and family willing an able to take care of us and our farm. Thank You too all of you that kept in touch and followed our travels. All our love and thanks, Ken & Laura... read more

It's been a few days since we've had access to email. We drove into Rotorua and found where the locals stay for the hot springs. While it looked scary from the road it was a total delight to soak in the "natural" springs straight from the earth. It was great to finally rest and slow down. We met some folks from Seattle making thier way around finding cheese makers writing for US magizines. They shared thier cheese while we shared our wine. It was a great evening. The New Zealanders know how to make cheese!. We have a few days left. It's been great .. We're off to the caves tomorrow and hopefully will check in Ken and Laura ... read more

We drove to Picton which is the most northern town on the South Island and waited for the Ferry Crossing. We arrived around 8:30pm to find the town closed for the night. We spent the night in the holding area of the ferry landing and got in line to board the interisland ferry at 4:30am in the morning. We booked our trip via the internet and saved over 90 bucks. yeah.. for to the locals for the tips. We had a wonderful sailing through beautiful waterways. Both of us took lots of pictures but we discovered we didn't have the flash card in the camera until later in the day. (Bummer) As a result we can't share with you the scenery and the great shots we both took. We drove up the Northern Island to the ... read more

Here are some photos... read more

Greetings. Our last day with Chad we hiked two glaciers. (Fox and Franz) and drove to the pancake rocks ( and blow hole) All of us loved the hikes but the hightlight was watching the sunset over the Tasman Sea and the pancake rocks. We camped on the West Side and watched the ocean beat the shore, we woke to our new neighbors the Kewa birds. They do not fly and are very curious. We sadly dropped Chad off yesterday in Christchurch. That was a very fast 10 days. We were not ready to return him back to the States. Last night we drove up North along the East coast for about an hour and camped on the beach. Today we continued North through the Victoria Mountain Range. We saw more sheep and lots of logging. ... read more

We left the sunny shores of Lake Wanaka. It was warm and had lots of sand flies so thick you breathed them in while just standing. The full moon over the lake last night was magical. We went to Puzzle world just outside Wanaka. It was fun and well worth the couple hours and laughs,.. We went through the maze and Ken won collecting all the towers and getting out before Chad and Laura We stayed at the Wyndem Resort. Washed our laundry, sheets and stinky socks. It was great to have our own rooms and beds and 2 showers within 24 hours. Ken and Chad came up with a new curse word for the trip... " Bundaberg" which is a very nasty rum. We got up from our warm beds, showered, and had breakfast, did ... read more

Sorry about not checking in.. or updating our blog. We tried... and are still learning this blog thing....and somehow it didn't "post"... Chad was successul.! Overview, Day One.. we flew into Christchurch.. we couldn't wait to get the hell out of town.. We drove down the coast in the rain..and saw more sheep than we could possibly imagine. Day 2... we got up were very hungry and we could not find breakfast before 10AM... very strange. They have meat pies everywhere. This is where we stopped along the way to the round rocks on the beach. We ended up at Dunedin where where we spent the night on the pensinsula. We watched the little blue penguins come in for the night under a moon light stars. These guys are about a foot high,.. and walked up ... read more

It rained all day on Saturday which made it tough to get things done before our trip. I guess this was testing us for the spring in New Zealand. ... read more