Keeping Busy: The First Week in NZ

I've been here a week and two days now. The first or second day, we hit the thrift store and got two old wooden tables. Shannon is sanding them down and going to paint them dark blue. She has projects going all the time, gardening, sewing, decorating.

I can't remember what day we did what, but here we are at Mission Beach, where we had Mexican food for lunch.

On Friday afternoon, we drove up North to Grant's family bach (vacation house). It's on a peninsula in Doubtless Bay, a four hour drive from Auckland. This is the sandy beach in front of the bach. The tide was out and left interesting wave patterns in the sand. Cars drive on the beach like at Pismo.

They were having a "suck your stomach in" contest. Also shell gathering.

This is the view from the front porch. We saw dolphins jumping out of the water on Sunday morning.

This is the bach, it has one bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, garage with a boat inside. The couch folds out to a bed. I got the bedroom.

Sunday morning before we drove home.

We stopped at a Maori memorial hill with a 360 degree view. I forgot the name of it.

We stopped on the way back to Auckland at Russell. Took the car ferry from Pahia to Russell.

I'm standing in front of the Bay of Islands Swordfish Club, where Carl and I had a great time last year. We love Russell.

We had lunch at a cafe with our table on the edge of the beach. This is the view from our table, the Russell pier.

This was the best. A little girl and her older brother were playing on the sand. She wanted to roll a huge rock to the water from the top of the boardwalk. She tried once, then got out her long stick and instructed her brother to move the rock. This little guy tried to lift it and shove it, and finally figured out that he could flop it end over end to move down the sand. All the while, the sister had her stick pointing and swinging just like a conductor. He did finally get the rock to the water. We all laughed and now it's a joke between Shannon and Grant, she had the wand and he moves the rock. You should click 2 times on the picture to see up close.

We decided to take the long and winding road home, instead of the straight 2 lane highway. We traveled the coastal road, hardly passing other cars. We stopped at a beach for Grant to do some surfing. The beach was shared with a cow pasture.

Grant got in a couple of rides, the waves weren't big enough.

Pulled over to look out at the coast. It's completely empty with beautiful beaches. We got home around 8:30 after a full day of driving and stopping to see the sights.

Today is Monday. Grant went to work. Shannon and I went to One Tree Hill and had lunch at the cafe there. We walked around, I wanted to see some sheep, but couldn't find any.

We did a short hike.

Tonight we made taco's for dinner. Delicious! I made salsa, chopped all by hand. Shannon made guacamole. We had Bananarama's (we made that up) OJ, Bananas, Tequila, Ice - like a smoothie.