I woke up to the rain coming through the bug screen onto my face a little bit, but i didn’t mind. It was nice to have the fresh air. 🙂
I kept my phone right next to the ear closest to the road, with my noise maker turned up just enough to cover the sound of the cars as they drove by. The ear plugs I had in helped with that as well. 🙂
At some point, Chase rolled the windows up, and then he went back to bed, and I will woke up for the day. Since it was raining, I only went outside long enough to use the facilities, and then crawl back in. I spent the next probably hour and a half or so writing journal posts in order to catch up, and with the one that I’m doing right now, assuming everything goes well, I will be completely caught up! I should actually have this one published tonight.
🥳
Sometime around 9:30 or 10:00, with Chase still sleeping, and with me needing to use the bathroom for a bit more than just finding the nearest tree, I woke Chase up, and we drove into town, into Franz Joseph.
The public bathrooms and Friends Joseph were pretty nutty! You walk in, and there’s a recorded voice over a speaker telling you to close the door and then press an electronic button to lock it. It then informs you that you have 10 minutes before the door will automatically unlock, and it will give you a warning when you have one minute left. 🙃
I figured Chase was in the mood for eating out, as he generally likes to eat out, and we hadn’t eaten out in a while, so I suggested that we could go to one of the restaurants that was open. He picked a Chinese one, and we headed over to it. Unfortunately, the menu wasn’t super conducive to vegan eating, though they did have some salad options. Though they had salad options, I wasn’t in the mood to spend $28 for a salad, so I just decided to not order anything but to eat what we already had in the car. Chase went ahead and ordered a pad thai, which he had never had before and didn’t like very much, and he also ordered some dumplings, which looked more like potstickers than dumplings, but whatever.
I worked on getting some online errands done that I needed to do to help inform my decision about when to come home. I created some new accounts when I created my new business, and those accounts came with bonus possibilities if I met certain criteria. I have only a few more weeks to meet that criteria, or I lose quite a lot in account bonuses. One of the accounts has to have the criteria met by January 23rd, and the other by January 26th. Couple that with everything else, and I’ve decided to go ahead and go home on January 15th, which was my original return date. 🙃
I should have gotten that taken care of already, but I didn’t do it, so I hope the relatively good deal for the 15th is still available tomorrow.
Gosh, I hope they’re open tomorrow!!!
From there, we drove over to the gas station / mechanic shop, where we hoped to maybe get some wire from the mechanic to properly splice our fuel line. Unfortunately, it looked like the mechanic shop was closed, but Chase did find some wire in the gas station, and I noticed that an electrician pulled into the gas station parking lot, so I mentioned that to chase as well, and he went over and was able to borrow some wire crimpers to properly crimp the butt connectors on.
Unfortunately, I think we accidentally left the headlights on, so we ended up draining the battery down. Fortunately, the first person I asked for assistance had jumper cables in the super kind and came over and gave us a jump.
Being a rainy/cloudy day, the mountains weren’t visible, unfortunately. It’s kind of funny (in a really really really disappointed sort of way)… The number one thing at the top of my list to see in New Zealand was the Southern Alps of the South Island, but looking at the weather between now and when I’m going to leave, it’s very likely that I’m not going to be able to see them the way I wanted to. There’s pretty much just lots of clouds and/or rain for the next two weeks in the forecast.
The helicopter would have been perfect, but being unable to actually see almost anything of the view while on the trip, it left me still without having actually seen the full Vista of the mountains.
I’m really disappointed right now, if you can’t tell. 🙃 I’m holding out hope that I’ll still get a chance to see the mountains without them being completely blanketed by clouds, and thus not even visible to us onlookers.
So we drove to the front Joseph parking area with the thought that we might hike up to the Franz Joseph glacier. Unfortunately, the parking lot was so incredibly packed that we lost all interest in even going, as it was literally a crowd of people walking up the path. The only thing that I regret from that, is having seen a waterfall in the distance that was probably thousands of feet tall that I didn’t get to see up close. That would have been really cool to see, but at the same time, the crowds just completely turned me off. Had it been a clear sunshiny day, I probably would have braved the crowds, and then gone even further to get into the Little valley right below the biggest of the mountains, but it was a cloudy day such that you couldn’t even see the mountains anyway.
From there, we drove down to the fox glacier, but the fox Glacier was a much longer walk, and again without being able to see the mountains, you’re just walking up to the bottom of a glacier. That would be a pretty cool experience, I suppose, but without all the rest of it, it wasn’t really worth the hike. There’s a decent viewpoint to see the glacier away. You may not be right next to it, but it’s still a decent viewpoint, so that’s what we ended up doing later.
So we tried to Glacier spots, but gave up on both, and then headed out to the beach where supposedly, unclear days, you could see the whole mountain range and all its splendor. Unfortunately, while we were out there, the mountain range never appeared. It was completely covered in clouds.
We ended up driving South for about an hour, only to realize that the clouds left to the mountains right after we left. 😞
We drove back, and were able to get a somewhat decent view of Mount Cook, with the rest of the mountains being covered in clouds, and even Mount Cook clouding over again. I guess we missed a very small window, having left right when things cleared up and having gotten back as things were clouding back over.
So I’m pretty disappointed, honestly. It’s been an absolutely fabulous trip, so I’m trying not to let it get me down. It’s just hard when the thing you wanted to see most in the entire 2-month trip is something you don’t get to see. I guess that’s just something you get to deal with when you’re dependent on weather.
There was something else i really wanted to do, a hike, following the super blue river all the way up into the heart of the mountains to the beautiful blue lakes, but Chase wasn’t too keen on it…
Granted, it might well have been a “Stephen adventure,” off into the unknown. 🙃
You make compromises when you travel with other people, so you don’t get to do everything that you want to, though Chase has been amazing, really. And honestly, for this adventure, I didn’t really express how important it was for me to do that hike, just casually mentioning it. And now with the weather the way it is, it’s just too late.
It’s completely my fault, as I’m pretty sure had i mentioned how important it was to me, Chase totally would have gone, even if it was just for me. He’s been great like that.
That adds to the sting of missing out on perhaps my most wanted adventure of the whole trip. I just didn’t say how important it was to me, so he didn’t even really know, so I missed out.
In fact, I don’t think I even realized how important it was to me until today, when it looks like i might miss out on the mountains nearly altogether.
When I told Chase later how important it was for me to do the hike, he said he’d be up for it on the other side (east side of the mountains, which had absolutely incredible scenery). So I’m crossing my fingers the weather holds off on a day when we’re around and able to do that.
Might have to do something to appease the weather gods, though, as the forecast is pretty dismal. 🙃
Well, there you go. I’m sitting at the overlook viewpoint place whatever you want to call it for the mountains here. I can see the clouds leaving them, but the sun has gone down and only a little bit of light remains, so I can’t actually see the peaks.
I’m crossing my fingers in the hopes that the weather tomorrow, which is supposed to be sunny for at least the morning and early afternoon before clouding over and then getting rainy for two weeks. Hope the sunny morning also includes cloud-free mountain views. Cross your fingers for me, as it’s going to be the last chance, I think in the time I have left between now and January 15th.
🤞🤞🤞
Daily friendly reminder to, if you’re not already, leave every person and every place better than you found them.
Love to all y’all. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 