Manganui Bluff to Utea Park 30 km / 19 miles The morning arrives after a much warmer night. Our campsite was tucked enough behind a dune to keep the wind at bay. I had an interval the night before when I jerked awake, from what I never discerned, and lay tensely listening to the noises …
Month: October 2017
10/20 90 Mile Beach
A wonderful day, full of wind, blowing sand, and the energizing power of the ocean. An elegant and adventurous line of boardwalks and stairs lead from our penthouse campsite to the beach. Then, the infamous beach walk begins. The sand is lovely and hard packed, and gorgeously clean of both man made trash and rotting …
10/19 Walking Legs: Activate
10/19 - 15 km We made it! pc: Patrick the GermanCape Reinga, the northern terminus of the Te Araroa, is spectacular. A lighthouse overlooks the colliding of the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea; one turquoise, one dark smoky blue. There is not a defined line, but a patchwork of the two pieced by the …
10/18 Ode to Foreign Groceries
Walking into a grocery store in a foreign country is thrilling. I mean, judge me if you will, but I enjoy roaming the aisles of a familiar grocery store, just to see if I can find something unusual that has escaped my notice before. Send me out to a store where I’ve never seen anything, …
10/17 It is English, in’t it?
I’m having a bit of a problem understanding the NZ accent. For the most part I do ok, but if I get one that talks extra fast (they all talk somewhat fast) or over a speaker system, I’m losing important things in translation. Which is how I found myself running after a bus I was …
10/16 – Matilda to the Rescue
Today was a classic scavenger hunt of chores day. Parker returned from an early morning walk bearing glad tidings of great coffee. At the pharmacy we had to pull the pharmacist aside for every item, trying to figure out the over-the-counter equivalents between home and here. Turns out Benadryl is a prescription here. We walked …
10/15- Auckland Arrival
It’s really quite amazing that humans have invented a pressurized aluminum can that we ride in to cross the oceans. In less than a day. It’s also kind of amazing that they manage to serve you food that’s recognizable as such; not just Matrix gruel, but things like omelet with to-mah-to (that’s how they pronounce …
Time is Flying and so are We
Here it is!!! The Day of Flying. Here’s how the time got to here... After a 28 hour drive to Austin, the unending flatness of Texas eased by a book read aloud, we arrive in....a huge city. What?! I had thought Austin was a quaint and quirky little town. It’s quaint and quirky all right, …
Put yourself In The Way of Luck, and then, Hang On.
Thru-hiking. A hobby? A passion? An addiction? For us it falls somewhere on this continuum, probably towards the latter end. Since the inception of this blog 3 years and 3 hikes ago, we have covered another 4400 miles (a stuttery start, to be generous, as evidenced by the singlular entry from the 200 mile mark …
Continue reading Put yourself In The Way of Luck, and then, Hang On.
muddy shoe memoirs 