Mt Cook

Well, here it is, the last night before our 6:00am flight out of New Zealand in the morning. Everyone is asleep, but here I sit on the Internet at about 11:30 at night since we bought minutes and who wants to waste them?

We have had a blast. Gig for Gig - my Dad and I kept up with each other on number of photos we took. We enjoyed showing each other what we had captured after jumping back in the car and Gary pulling out of what ever stop we had deemed 'photo worthy'.

One very often photo op was some flowers that grew like weeds EVERYWHERE. We couldn't get enough. Here we had a field of them, then some grass, then a beautiful line of trees along a creek with them growing under the trees - it seriously looked planted:

After Milford Sound, we went back to Te Anau happy campers. The next morning we backtracked to Queenstown and on to Twizel (we think the people who live there are called 'twizzlers' - we are not sure). We had made such good time we stopped at a small Alpine Village to discover a beautiful turquoise lake with our first good view of Mt. Cook.

We then checked into our hotel and decided since we had time and the day was nice, to go take photos of Mt Cook from Tekapo lake. We piled into the car and headed off.We had a bit of trouble bringing out the peak since there was a cloud behind it and we kept trying different locations, but our first location was the best.

Closer:

The peak we are trying to pull out of the clouds:

We then headed off for a little side trip because the lady in the visitors center said we could see Tasmain Glacier and Tasmain Lake with icebergs in it on another drive. What she didn't mention was the half hour hike, straight up rock to get to it. I made it but said some naughty words to Gary as he snapped my photo. I would have vomited on him but my stomach was empty.

I got a good panorama shot of the lake, with Mt Cook peeking out on the far left of the photo.

Gary is a wise man. He had mentioned as we drove to Mt Cook that we couldn't guarantee a good day the next day so we headed out for photos. We woke up to a socked in valley and no mountains to be found anywhere. A little disappointing, but we had been so lucky with the weather so far, we couldn't complain.

There are thousands of other photos and other places we went, and I am going to get to them all. Every day has been non stop and I have had to cram in a wee bit of Internet time whenever I could get it (Gary has kept the door open so he can see how late I am staying up even as I type) - so quick, sloppy posts.

I will do better when we get back to Australia and then two days later - on to Houston.