(written on February 9th from notes taken previously).
It was a rainy morning. 🌧️
Having spent so much time yesterday with good weather, my face planted in my cell phone screen trying to get everything figured out for my trip, I thought about the irony of it being a rainy day today instead of yesterday.
Oh well. 🙃
I wasn’t sure what all I wanted to do today. I had Wilkies Pools on the list, but did I want to make the hike for a few small, super cold pools of water?
I did see a video online of somebody who slid down one of the pools like a water slide… but…
Eventually, once the rain stopped, I did indeed decide to make the walk up the mountain toward the pools.
The walk itself was in short-growth rain forest, by the looks of things (moss all over all the bright yellow-green trees and plants growing everywhere).
It wasn’t too long of a walk, maybe a couple of kilometers? I don’t remember for sure.
The main trail crossed over the mountain Creek via a long swing bridge, and I snapped a few pictures there before continuing up.
Compared to the gazillions of water features that I’ve seen in New Zealand since I’ve been here, it wasn’t spectacular, by any means, but it was still beautiful.
I scrambled around going upstream a bit, above the pools and slide to see what all was up there, but I didn’t go too far.
The sun was out a bit, so I spent some time sitting on one side of the stream in the shade trying to do some journal catch up.
Eventually, I decided I was going to go ahead and give the natural water slide a try, which was cold, but fun, and those present got a kick out of me sliding down. 🙃
I think I went two, maybe three times down.
Chatted a bit with my sister on the way back, sending her pictures of the vegetation because it reminded me so much of the Ho Rainforest, relatively nearby to where she used to live in Washington, albeit the vegetation here is much shorter than the massive trees of the Ho Rainforest.
Anyway, after a beautiful little walk and dip, I pointed my vehicle northeast, next major destination– Tongariro National Park.
The first leg of the journey found me trying to take a small country road through the middle of the wilderness, passing through beautiful, green hill country up to the Mangamingi Saddle and all around.
Eventually, I realized that the road that I was trying to go on wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to go, so I ended up doing a loop that took me almost all the way back to where I had begun before I was able to jog north onto highway 43.
I hate backtracking, but it was beautiful.
Highway 43 Northeast took me through more beautiful Green Hill country, much like most of New Zealand with lovely photo op spots, including at Strathmore Saddle, Whangamomona Saddle and Tahora Saddle.
As it was approaching dark, I found what seemed to be the absolute perfect Freedom camping spot for the night at a place called Joshua Morgan’s Grave. It was right off the main road, had a long drop (not the nicest 😅), and was next to a beautiful river.
So I packed it in for the night.
Or so I thought…
After veging out for a little bit, some large, redneck looking pickup truck came to a slow stop right at the entrance to the tiny little car park where I was parked, sat there for a little bit, and very creepily did a burnout and took off.
I… didn’t like that. 😅
The way they acted just felt… creepy, so despite having felt like I had an absolutely fantastic little spot for the night, I got my little butt back in the driver’s seat, rather quickly 😅, and hightailed it out of there.
I was already really tired, so I wasn’t in the best shape to be driving again, but I managed. 🙏
Very happy to to find another place, though it was a bit of a drive. I don’t remember what time I rolled into the Te Maire car park. I felt really late, but I made it, parked my van near an absolutely enormous tree, and called it a night.
Tired. 🙃
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 