Tui's in our back yard

Mustangs and Maple Glen garden tour

                                     

If it’s a herd of mustang’s then that’s what we saw last weekend. At least 150 inside  the Velodrome at Invercargill and another 20 or so in the car park outside. What a thrill (for one of us anyway) to see so many beautifully restored and polished Mustangs some of them of the fabulous 60’s era and then progressively through to the 21^st century models.  Mostly they were from Mustang car clubs here in Southland, Canterbury and Waikato.  That was Saturday, then on Sunday we visited the Maple Glen gardens east of Wyndham. If ever there was a garden to visit it is this one. I am sure it’s the nicest garden I have ever seen. It was a beautiful day and with Rhododendrums and camellia’s in flower covering 25 acres it was magnificent. I see they have a website so a quick look there is worth while if you can’t get there in person.

Pictures from the weekend

Yesterday was one of those glorious fine Southland days where the air is so clear you can see for miles. We continue to explore the region by car doing day trips as we’re not confident yet to take DREEEM out. The ground around us is drying out nicely but there is more rain coming so it’s safer to stay put for a bit longer.

We went to the Riverton car display and craft market on Saturday. Riverton is a small town on the river mouth on the southern southland coast. The car display was of classic cars – maybe a smaller version of “Beach hop”. Well the amazing thing is that classic cars are cars we have all owned in the past. Of course there was a very strong American car theme down here which suited one of more than the other. Sunday saw us heading to the Gore Rhododendron festival, a picturesque craft day set in the block in the centre of town which is the garden. As Gore is the country music capital of NZ (according to locals) the entertainment was really appealing. With the glorious weather  we decided to head back to the Mavora lakes to take some photo’s. You might remember we tried to get in there in the winter and were blocked by the snow. The extra miles took us past the Air museum just east of Gore where we stopped for a quick look and a lovely lunch. The photo of the train is also taken at this site.

Check out some extra photo’s I have entered in previous entries.

Dunedin

We have just come "home" again after a fabulous three day weekend in Dunedin. We have been meaning to explore up that way sometime and this weekend seemed like the one. We firstly went along the northern side of the Otago Peninsula and "discovered" Carey Bay. Of course that meant stopping at the Carey Bay Hotel for a drink. We thoroughly enjoyed the coast road and Aramoana and the Sealion on the sandy beach. We shopped and dined, then visited the Otago Peninsular. The visit through Larnoch Castle was rather over priced but a oncer and the photos and scenery from there were stunning. We went all the way to the Gannet colony at the end and saw nesting birds and some seals. Today we drove home through Lawrence which is a quaint little old town which began as a gold mining town and has free wifi all through the main street as an attraction to tourists to stop. of course we stopped for coffee and wifi.
Photos to follow.

Warming up

Following our 10 days in the North Island we have returned to a much more comfortable climate down here. Spring must have arrived while we were away. We have been able to do away with some of the insulation we have been using to keep the motorhome warm, we’ve opened up the “climb-through” into the cab and that adds a feeling of more space. We also found yesterday that it was warm enough to leave the door and some windows open all day – what a change!

Overall we have wintered the cold better than we thought. Our efforts to insulate the windows, door and pipes have all been worth while. We are well prepared now for future winters, although we do still think that walls on our awning would be a good investment one day.

Work continues to fill most of my week days and so our adventures are weekend based at the moment. We spent Saturday with Edel and Peter doing the Catlins River walk. We took 2 cars so that we had one at each end and walked from one to the other along the river through Beech forest. The walk took 5 hours (including lunch stops) crossing the river 4 times on swing bridges.  It proved to be a good work out for us as we plan to do more day (and maybe longer) walks while down here.  Needless to say we didn’t go far on Sunday.