Saturday, July 23rd
I don’t know how Woodrow has so much energy. That boy is a little ball of energy, even
when he is tired. He struggles to fall
asleep last night even though he was in our room and had lots of snuggles. The rain and wind was pounding down last
night and I woke up several times thinking we’d surely need an ark in the
morning to float to our next destination.
Our hotel was located across the street from Rainbow Springs which
looked like mostly a bird sanctuary area
and one bird in particular was awake at 6am and wanted us all to know about
it. So, I could have slept much longer,
but so is life. I could always sleep
more these days.
Mason ran out for ice cream and cheesecake treats
last night so the boys thoroughly enjoyed having some leftovers for breakfast…we’re
just too fun on vacation. There seems to
be one main grocery store here, and it’s really just not that great, in my
opinion. I guess I was expecting more
Whole Foods type grocery stores. Mason did get a bag of grapes for the car
ride, so it wasn’t all bad food.
Today was mostly a driving day. We headed from Rotorua (in the upper part of
the North Island) to Wellington (the Southern tip of the North Island) and this
was supposed to take about 6 hours. It
worked out conveniently that it was a pretty raining/drizzly day, so it was
good to be in the car. The scenery was
amazing, and the pictures don’t even do it justice. We decided that we’d skip walking around the geothermals
since we were thinking that it wasn’t going to compare to our Yellowstone
experience, we could see some from the road, and we didn’t want to pay the huge
cost to enter one of the thermal villages.
Throughout the day we passed through flat lands, heavily
forested mountain areas, rolling hills, grasslands…it was fascinating and
reminded me a lot of the NW United States.
Because of the rain and sun we were fortunate to witness many beautiful
rainbows along the beginning of our drive, which the boys really enjoyed. We stopped in Taupo where we had lunch at a
McDonalds where you could eat in an old DC3. Although Mason and I are getting
pretty tired of McDonalds, the kids enjoyed the experience and having a little
time out of the car to stretch their legs and run around the play area. We also got to see a SeaPlane taking off in
Lake Taupo right as we were leaving town.
We kept heading on the road South and right about the time
we needed to stop for a bathroom break there was a sign for a small National
Army Museum. Their sign said they had
tanks and toilets, so we had to stop.
The boys had fun climbing on the tanks and snapping some photos for a
few minutes before getting back in the car.
Long.Driving.Day. We didn’t go
into the museum exhibits, so it was nice that the tanks were outside for the
kids to look at. Theo also enjoyed a small lego collection that we saw inside
when we stopped to use the toilets.
Our journey took us to Wellington for the evening in the
very South of New Zealand’s Northern Island.
We stayed at a Best Western in the town that was an okay hotel. Mason scouted out a BBQ restaurant and it was
delicious! The boys scarfed down their
quesadillas and fries, while I enjoyed a steak and Mason had a good looking
rack of ribs. When we got back to the
hotel Mason was sweet enough to do a load of laundry for us. We just needed a days worth of clothes (so we
did 2) to get us to our next hotel where there would be laundry in our room. I
so appreciate this man for doing those kinds of jobs when we’re traveling!
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