New Zealand 7 - Te Anau

Te Anau is a great little town located on the southern shore of Lake Te Anau. It's surrounded by beautiful mountains, which were still snow-covered at the beginning of October.

We got a great 1-bedroom apartment/hotel room at a lovely little hotel, which was directly across the street from Lake Te Anau.

You can just sit on your balcony and watch the Kiwis race their sailboats all over the lake. It's no wonder that they are some of the world's best sailors!

Since the lakes are so big, it's often better to go across them rather than try to go around them. We wanted to go hiking on part of the Kepler Track, so we took a "water taxi" across Lake Te Anau to get to the Track.

The lake was simply mesmerizing most of the time. After a hard days' hiking or sight-seeing, we would just take a glass of wine out onto the balcony and look at the lake...

and look at the lake some more!

Next, we take a boat trip, and a bus, and another boat trip to see Doubtful Sound!

Thanksgiving at the Oregon Coast

Hello everyone,

I thought we would share a few photos from our recent Thanksgiving we spent on the Oregon coast. A few months ago, we decided that we would not have a big Thanksgiving dinner at the house and would go somewhere for the holiday. We found a great little hotel below Yachats, Oregon that allowed dogs. It was a little older, but it had great character. Below is our favorite seat for the 4 days we were there. It was also Angus' favorite as he could watch birds, rabbits, and other wildlife in the backyard. We saw elk droppings, but no elk while we were there.


On the way from Newport to our hotel on Thanksgiving Day, we saw this great overlook so I decided to take a picture of the bay and lighthouse.

As I looked at the beach that you can see in the middle right of the picture just above, I thought that it looked like the beach was moving. So I zoomed in with the camera and the beach was covered with hundreds of sea lions.

A close-up shot at the lighthouse. Sorry but I don't recall the name of it. There are lighthouses about every 10 miles down the coast, so I lose track of them.

Angus was one happy dog on the beach. We brought his "Chuck-it" and hit the beaches for hours everyday to try and wear him out. I don't think we ever did, but he was tired when we got home.

For those who are not familiar with Oregon beaches, here's a photo of the way an Oregon beach normally looks. Unlike most other places, it's rare to see very many people. Of course, this was a cool winter day, but it was still pretty nice.

On the day after Thanksgiving it was windy and cool again, but we hit the beaches anyway. Annie and Angus were walking along, and I saw the reflections in the sand and managed to quickly take this picture.

On Saturday, it was beautiful. The sun came out, the clouds disappeared, and the temperatures went up to about 60 degrees. We drove up to "Devil's Churn", which is an inlet where the waves pound into shore, then race up a narrow channel and shoot up into the air.

On Saturday, we also drove up to Newport to see some of our old haunts. I've always loved this bridge in Newport.

All around the harbor, sea lions were laying around.

A panorama picture of the Newport bridge.

I'll leave you with a couple of sunset pictures from Saturday evening. These were taken at Ona Beach State Park.

And a last shot straight into the waves and sun. A fitting end to a great holiday.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures! We had a great time taking them.

Birds and Ducks at Ponds near TriQuint

It's been a while since I posted anything. I'll try to be more active soon and finish up the New Zealand photos. In the meantime, here are some local photos I have been taking. My company is located in a very nice park, and I take my camera so I can take pictures during lunch. There's quite a few small ponds, which have some great ducks and other wildlife around. This first picture was taken last winter.

This picture was taken today (01-Dec-2009) when a bunch of honkers flew in and landed. I was trying to get a "flyout" shot, but they all took off before I got ready.

Male Mallard

A Green-winged Teal

Buffleheads (male in front)

Wood Ducks (males are the bright colored ones)

A Kestrel hunting in the trees nearby

A Hooded Merganser last winter

It's a great place to get some quick exercise, and there's no telling what types of wildlife you will see.

I hope you enjoy the photos!

New Zealand 6 - West Coast of the South Island

Welcome to the next part of our trip to New Zealand. In this part of the trip, we travelled from the Abel Tasman area down the west coast of the South Island to Te Anau in the Fiordland area. We were on the road for 4 days in a row, so it was a little more difficult part of the trip, than our normal times of staying put for a few days.

One of the more ubiquitous sites in New Zealand is the farm scene. There are beautiful pastoral scenes of sheep, cows or horses grazing at the foot of glacier-covered mountains. Maybe you could see these types of scenes in the Alps, but I can’t think of anywhere else you would see these scenes.

When we were preparing for the trip, I checked out a library book which had a picture of the Punakaiki Rocks in it. These rocks are formed from layers of limestone that have eroded over the eons into these fantastic contorted shapes.

On the second day down the coast, we stopped at Fox Glacier. It was a very rainy day, but we walked out to the tip of the Fox Glacier. The town of Fox Glacier is a really nice little town, and reminded us of a lot of little towns in the Cascades or even the town of Mt Shasta, CA.

The next day was beautiful! Bright sunshine, no rain, no clouds, no wind. We had a gorgeous view of the mountains of Mount Cook National Park from our hotel parking lot.

The hotel owner asked if we were going to see Lake Matheson. We had planned for a pretty good drive for the day, so we said that we weren’t planning to. He advised us to go see the lake, as today would be a very good day. He was correct! The lake was a perfect mirror, reflecting the mountains without a ripple on it.

The southern part of the South Island has several beautiful long lakes that fill valleys for miles. When you leave the west coast and turn inland, you begin to have to go around or along side these large lakes. We had great picnic lunches on Lake Hawea, north of Wanaka,

and on Lake Wakatipu, south of Queenstown.

We will discuss Queenstown later, as we went back there after staying in Te Anau. But for now, we are arriving at Te Anau. The long trip down the west coast of the South Island is over and we will next go visit Milford and Doubtful Sounds, and do some hiking around the Te Anau area.

We'll leave you with a picture of Cameron Flats, which is a beautiful valley on the way to Te Anau.

New Zealand 5 - Abel Tasman National Park

Hello and welcome to the 5th post of our New Zealand Trip (actually 6th post if you count the map post, which is number "0").

We have now arrived on the South Island, and our first place to visit is the Abel Tasman National Park. We rented a motel room in Motueka at the Equestrian Lodge, which was a wonderful, lushly gardened place. It was run by a British couple, who kept it spotless.

But onto the sights! First up, a hike on the Abel Tasman Track. If you would like to ever visit and hike the Abel Tasman, here's a link to the NZ Dept of Conservation website.



The Abel Tasman is a beautiful Track. At the time of year that we visited (late September), you pretty much have it to yourself. We may have seen a half-dozen people all day. As you walk through the forest, you begin to feel that you have stepped back in time about 75 million years just from the vegetation.



Around every other turn, you pop out onto these wonderful views of the ocean. The track is full of little hidden beaches, that can be yours alone for the day. Just walk the beach, looking at the shells and anything else washed up on the shore. It was so tempting to just forget about the rest of the hike, but you know there are other things up ahead!

When the trail dips back into the forest, there are lots of waterfalls running as this is still very much the rainy season in New Zealand. Once we get further south on the South Island, there are parts of the West Coast that get about 250 feet of rain a year! They don't measure their rainfall in inches, they measure it in meters!

Here's another picture of the ferns that you are literally walking under. The fern tree in the center of the picture is about 20 feet tall. It's hard for a picture to capture the actual feeling of walking through this forest.

We had a lunch on a beach with only one other person there. Then we just wandered up and down the beach - a little too long! We weren't as far along the trail as we thought we were (John's mistake), so we really had to jog for almost an hour to catch our "ride" back. Just as an aside, in many of the NZ parks that are on the ocean, you can take water taxis (ours is in the picture below). You can take the taxi to a point in the park, then hike back. Or what we did was to hike out to a point to meet the taxi which brought us back.

Unfortunately, due to John's misreading of the map, we had to hoof it to get to the taxi. Of course, after we did that - the taxi was 20 minutes late!

Due to tides, the taxi could not take us all the way back to where we started hiking. It dropped us off, and we had a 45 minute hike back to our car. Along the way, there were more beautiful beaches since the tide had gone out while we were on the hike.

The next day, we decided to visit Pupu Springs (the Maori name is Te Waikoropupu Springs). Beautiful, clear water is upwelling at a rate of 14,000 liters per second.

It's a nice little hike to get to the springs, and gorgeous once you are there.

We only had about two days to spend in the Abel Tasman area. I know we short-changed it, but one month is just not enough for New Zealand! We are in the latter half of our trip, and we still have most of the South Island to see. In our next post, we ride down the West Coast of the South Island, heading to Te Anau, which is to be our base for our stay in the Fiordland area.

New Zealand 4 - Wellington to South Island

We left Taupo on Tuesday, Sept 23rd and headed south to Wellington. Windy Welly lived up to its nickname!

Wednesday was Te Papa day. Te Papa is the national museum of New Zealand, the equivalent of the Smithsonian for the US. It was simply overwhelming. The building is as impressive as the exhibits, as you can see below.

Lots of beautiful Maori carvings and art. We took lots of pictures inside the museum, but not many are worth posting. Long exposures and focusing issues. I did have a lot of focus issues with the new camera. I don't know what it was focusing on many times. It would seem to pick out something on the very edge of the scene and make that sharply focused and ignore everything you were pointing it at!

One of the things we really enjoyed in New Zealand was all of the corrugated iron work. There were giant gumboots, statues, giant rabbits all made from corrugated iron. This station wagon even made it to Te Papa!

We took the cable car up to the Wellington Botanical Gardens. Short ride, but steep! It's a beautiful garden, full of tropical flowering plants, trees, and flowers.

From the top of the Cable Car platform, I took a nice panorama shot overlooking Wellington.

We only had a short stay in Wellington (2 nights). It clearly deserved more time. You would think that with 30 days to spend, we would have had more time, but it's surprising how fast it goes. On the 25th, we boarded an InterIsland Ferry to go to the South Island. The picture to the right is the ferry once it was docked in Picton on the South Island, but I couldn't get a good picture in Wellington when we boarded.

Here's the route we took from the North Island to the South Island. You loop out of Wellington's huge harbour and make a beeline for the fiords of the South Island. We were never out of sight of land. Once you get into the channels at the South Island, it's just a beautiful little cruise watching the world go by.

Cruising throught the channels between the islands.

We arrived in Picton Harbour, and as you can see, it was a gorgeous day.

We picked up our rental car, had a picnic lunch overlooking Picton Harbour, and then took off towards Motueka and the Able Tasman National Park. Below is a picture of the Queen Charlotte Drive from Picton to Nelson. You can't use the word "beautiful" enough in New Zealand.

Next, we tramp around in the Able Tasman National Park!