Road Trip West

Every year I drive to-and-from Vermont and Montana. I usually speed, don't sleep and eat on the road. This year my mom made the trip west with me. It was a special treat to spend quality time with mom. With her in Alaska and me wherever I am, it's been a long time since we've been able to spend that amount of time together. We laughed a lot, listened to some good tunes and took our time to stop and smell the roses along the way. Thanks for making the journey with me, Ma'. Love you!

New Zealand Favorites

New Zealand is such a stunning place. It contains some of the most beautiful mountains, fish, rivers and lakes. No one can argue with this beauty. Here are some of my favorites from the trip. Enjoy.

Lake Angelus

 Mt. Cook

 Fishing

   Moo...

Wine...

Subaru Love

 Skies

Land

Flight

Welcome to Welcome Flat Hut

It has been awhile since I've posted so I am a lot of things we have done due to camera and computer issues along with the lack of available internet here. I will add the in-betweens later but here is our most recent adventure:

We left the car park with 18 km of trekking along the glacial blue Karangarua and Copland rivers, over long and skinny swing bridges and through the jungle-esque forest with windows of beautiful alpine scenery.

This time it wasn't just the two of us. We brought our friend Jenn from the UK, a virgin to trekking. We were excited to show her something new with hopes she would enjoy the experience. 

"A year ago I would have never done this," Jenn said as she approached the first skinny, long and bouncy swing bridge. It brought me joy to watch her cross that bridge and even more joy when we all made it to the hut that evening.

Welcome to Welcome Flat Hut:

With beautiful snow peaked mountains as your morning view and natural hot springs as your nighttime reward after a long walk. It's a pretty amazing place to be for a night or two.

The Room Underwater

 Today I roamed around Queenstown with my new Aussy friend staying at the hostel. We stopped at a place on the docks where you can see what is happening in the lake. Here are a couple shots from our little underwater experience.

 

NYE

Scene: NYE day

Simon and Els pick me up at my hostel to get some breakfast around 11:45 a.m. Our breakfast included discussing what we should do that day and scarfing down our food so that we had time to do it. We decided to hike the Greenstone/Caples trail (12 kilometers/7.45 miles) to a hut, fish on the way up and if we weren't rained out the next day, fish on the way down. Oh, but wait, we needed hut passes and food, and I needed a fishing license plus a sleeping pad and bag. At this time it's roughly 12:50 p.m. 

Ready, set, go!

Els and I rushed to go get hut passes, a sleeping bag and pad and the fishing license while Simo ran to the grocery store. We met up, smashed our stuff into the back of the car and were off.

An hour or so drive later, we arrived at the parking lot, repacked all of our stuff and took off (3 p.m.)

On the way up the trail we saw some fish but did not have a very good opportunity to catch them but that doesn't mean we didn't try.

We got to our hut around 9:30 p.m. and were so so so so so happy to see the hut. Apparently we were not the only ones with this great idea of how to spend NYE because the hut was PACKED! We set up camp on the floor in the common room. This turned out better than expected as a very intense snorer almost cleared out his room of sleepers with his all-night sawing.

We got up the next morning, took off and hiked straight to the confluence of the Greenstone and the Caples. We hiked up the Caples and began to fish. Here in NZ, it's sight fishing, we see the fish and then try our hardest not to spook the fish, all the while presenting the fly just perfectly for them to eat. 

Els spotted, probably, the hardest fish to spot behind a rock. She hiked down the hill and set out a few cast and all of the sudden, boom, fish on. It was maybe one of the coolest takes I have ever seen. 

We continured on for a couple more hours but we were all pretty tired of walking and being wet so we decided to head back. In the end, we probably walked a total of 19 miles and were pretty impressed with how much we accomplished after having no idea what we were going to do the day before.

Here's to my first real adventure in NZ! So glad I got to do it with some of my favorite people. Love you guys and thanks for including me. Happy honeymoon. 

 

New York City

I took the train down to the city to visit my friend Kate who recently moved there from Montana. Kate is kicking butt at NYU in her journalism masters program. Luckily, I got to steal her away from classes and interviews for a couple days to roam around the city. It was a great time catching up with an old friend in a new place. Cheers Kate, I'm super proud of you!

Missing Montana