Our hols and some pics

Hi everyone, I'm back from hols. We had a nice little tour around, visited our lovely friends and had a break from the daily grind on the farm and our paid work.

Get this though, we got all the way to Mt Ruapehu and then could not get up the mountain as the road was closed because of snow and ice on the road.......GO FIGURE..! Not sure what the tourists here for the Rugby World Cup would think of that!! We were not impressed and D was disappointed. However we did manage to find a smattering of snow nearby so he could throw snowballs!

RUN!

We really enjoyed the beautiful scenery:

Tongariro National Park

Bush (native forest)

We happened upon the Old Coach Road and drove along it as far as we could following the track along farmland. We reached a gate and went through on foot and shortly we came across a beautiful sight:

Mountain Cabbage Trees

Just fabulous! We'd never seen so many together like this.

More beautiful bush and a mountain stream

Snow-capped mountains

Lake Taupo

Thermal activity by lake

The week went very quickly indeed. Now we are back on the farm, and it will be time to swing into action again with so many jobs still to do before the heat of the summer kicks in. We have just had a big thunder storm pass over so a hoorah for a bit more much needed rain water in the tank, but it has been a pretty dry Winter so we are conscious of the fact we don't have a lot at present. Getting the veg garden in order, seedlings underway/planted and also planting the last of the trees/plants we have sitting around the place will be our priority. Sometimes it feels like we're not making a lot of progress, but I guess we'll get there someday!


And lastly here is our lovely view of the kowhai trees with their yellow flowers. They blossom every Spring in early September and put on such a great show all along the wetland area at the bottom of our property.