Finally

Finally today we did something fun.

We drove about two hours west of Christchurch into Southern Alps. The Alps are stunning, new mountains whose tips are covered with snow and whose sides are so newly formed they are only gravel thinly covered with scrub. I say new, this is of course in geological terms, but the mountains are still growing in this area of the world at a rate of about two inches a year. One of the stops we made was a place called Castle Hill Reserve. It is a park with enormous limestone rock formations that you can boulder around on. It is perfectly natural, but looks like it was somehow created and is part of a castle formation. I have to say walking around definitely felt like a Lord of the Rings moment. The area was/is sacred to the Maori and artifacts were found in the region which are now in a museum. A couple of kilometers away is a cave system to explore, but we will have to come back in the summertime to do it. There are parts where an adult is waist deep in water and it is cold even in the summer. It was not appropriate for a winter trip.

Another stop was very cool for the anglers in the family. There was a little stream running fast into a clear lake. At points the stream was only two or three inches deep and skittering upstream were rainbow trout about 12 inches long. They were so big, the tops of the fish stuck clear out of the water. None of us had ever seen anything like it, and Steve and the boys are not inexperienced fisherman. I don't know if they were going upstream to mate or if as Sam thought it they simply get better food and oxygen that way, but it was the most incredible thing to see. There must have been a dozen or more of them. The boys chased them upstream at least 300 yards or so until they lost them by a road. Quite a sight.

As we moved higher into the mountains, the clouds and rain came down and settled on us. We stopped at a cozy mountain hotel with a wood stove and a pool table for soup and venison pie, then turned back for home. We are moving tomorrow into our permanent digs. Though we only have a couple of bags each, it still takes a bit of doing to pack and move, so we thought it best to head on home. I might try to take the boys all the way to the west coast during the between term break in a week or so.

Hallelujah, school is supposed to be open again tomorrow. So, finally, that should be fun too. Back to "normal."