Another morning waking up on the rocks by the lake - just another day in paradise. We made coffee and Andrew took his drone out to get some morning shots over the water. We opted to have cup o' noodles for breakfast since noodles are good at any time of day - noodles and coffee. I came up with an idea for a photo and now it is the funniest thing in the world to me. Okay - check out this picture below. Looks like all rocks, right? I am actually in this photo - see if you can find me and I'll reveal where I'm at in a later post.
While I was playing "rock", the boys set up the enu hammock and took turns taking pictures of each other while Emily and I looked on with our coffee wondering when the boys became so basic.
The next stop on our adventure was in Wanaka which was about 2 hours/166km from our campsite. Due to the influence in our world of social media, Andrew had seen some "straightaway" mountain shots on Instagram taken in New Zealand and really want to find a good one. So we did a little stop and go on our drive to take some photos as well as throwing up the drone and having it follow us in the RV -- pretty cool footage!
The drive was gorgeous - as we anticipated and as we got closer to Wanaka we crossed over "The Red Bridge" and then about 15 minutes later pulled into the cutest little lakeside town of Wanaka. We parked the RV on the street and wandered for about 30 seconds until we saw a sign that said "Mulled Wine" at a restaurant appropriately named Lake Bar where we grabbed an outside table along the main street and ordered up warm, spiced Mulled Wine, cheeseburgers and seafood chowder. Mulled wine tasted like Christmas in your mouth - but in August...but it's still cold. (Time zones, hemisphere climates, you seeing a trend with the things I enjoy thinking about? #science)
After lunch, we wandered around for a bit and popped into a few stores as Andrew was looking for some details on snowboarding and Jason was looking for a hatchet to help our with camp fire building. Without much luck, someone suggested we hit up Mitre10 which is basically the Home Depot of New Zealand. We followed Google Maps for a little until it got to a dirt path that went straight up hill and everyones determination went quickly down to 0%. However, I had just sipped on 3 mulled wines and hadn't had a good workout in a while so I volunteered to run up the hill. Was it necessary to run? Of course not - but it's just what I do. Run places - usually abnormally short distances - for no reason. (Or long distances.... see 50 States Blog). Long story short, I ran to Mitre10, was assisted by the nicest old man in the world who tried to give me the hatchet for free, and then ran back down the hill carrying said hatchet. And then Emily carried a hatchet around in her purse all afternoon.
Everyone was slowly fading so we made a quick stop at Urban Grind for a Flat White and a few little baked goods. Once caffeinated, we continued on our way back to the RV to head over to the Wanaka Tree. I believe the popularity of this tree is another product of Instagram - but it does make for some pretty cool shots. We hung around and took a handful of photos and then headed back to the RV to make our way to the grocery store (which ended up being wildly packed with all of the people coming down off the mountain) and then on to our first Holiday Park.
Until this moment, I had no clue what a holiday park was but I just played along as if I was a veteran RV-er. A holiday park is basically a camp sight where you can hook up your RV to power and they have a few cabins and campsites as well. Most holiday parks have showers and laundry facilities and also a common area to cook or grill out and just get out of the restricted space of the RV. This holiday also had trampolines and swings and a playground -- things only this 31 year old child would notice. We also had the joy of hot tubs at this location which was at the top of our to do list. We sautéed for an hour or two and then showered for the first time since we had landed on the South Island.
Once clean, Emily whipped up some chicken, green beans, rice and salad at the outdoor pavilion while the boys took turns doing pull ups on the scaffolding and Jason tried unsuccessfully how to teach me how to do a one armed pushup. Dinner was amazing but we were all ready to call it an early night.
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