(written on February 21st from notes taken previously)
I got a bit of a late start this morning after veging out I think a little bit later than I probably should have last night. 🙃
My first stop was to drive down to the Northwest end of Lake Coleridge to try to get a beautiful view of the lake. The road was a little rough and turned into riverbed rock as I got close to where the river entered the lake.
I ended up parking my van as it wasn’t smart to keep driving on the rock, and then walking around snapping a few pictures of the lake and landscape in the distance.
After snapping a handful of pictures, I ended up going right back to the little campsite to use the long drop, before deciding to explore the mountain valleys around me.
Driving back up the road the way I had come to go to the campground, upon arriving at some ranch outbuildings and what not, I noticed that there was a way to follow the road past the buildings and further up into the valley, so I went. 🙃
I drove along the dirt road for a little while, it making a turn toward my right which brought me back to a view of a canyon I had seen on the drive-in.
Looking at the map, I realized that if one were to follow that river down that canyon, you would end up back in Arthur’s Pass.
Kind of fun. 😊
I also noticed a gentleman writing his horse with a pack of dogs following him around through the field and then along the road.
Oh, I love the idea of that life. Away from the rest of the world, living life up in the mountains at the speed of horses and dogs.
☺️
Of course, without a special someone to share it with, it would also be super lonely.
That, and I have that internal drive that compels me to try to spend my life doing good for the world.
After the man on the horse and the pack of dogs passed, I decided to continue heading down that road out into the middle of the huge flat glacial valley.
I passed another ranch along the way, wound my way around dirt roads and canals and what not for a good long way, snapping pictures and enjoying the scenery.
Eventually, though I didn’t want to, I decided to cut my exploration short.
After all, I did need to be on a plane tomorrow in Christchurch, and the direction I was going, if indeed it was possible to follow the road I was on all the way to where it looked like it could go, would take me all the way back to the west coast. 🙃
Though I’m sure that would have been fun and exciting to explore, I didn’t fancy having to drive all the way from the west coast, back across the pass, and to Christchurch the night before my trip to Fiji.
So I decided to just sort of park there for a little while, with the braided river beds of the glacial valley to one side of me and mountain views all around me.
It was a beautiful, cloudy day, the clouds still high enough in the sky to get pictures of the surrounding mountains.
I also took advantage of the time to clean out and organize my van, wanting it to be nice and ready for my return from Fiji.
It’s always nice for me to return to cleanliness and organization than to come back to filth and disorganization.
So I cleaned and cleaned and organized and organized until I felt pretty good about the state of my little van.
After that, I did a little more exploring but came to a place where I couldn’t go any further. So I turned back and then explored a little more down a different road until I came to a place where I couldn’t go any further, the road ending in the enormously wide braided riverbed, with drop offs impossible for my vehicle to come back up… even if I were to decide to drive over them. 😆
That’s one rule of off-roading (and I guess of exploring in general, be it out driving, hiking/climbing, caving, etc): Don’t proceed along a route that you couldn’t reliably do in reverse (the exact same position without turning around) unless you know exactly where you were going and what you’re going to experience on the rest of the journey, being absolutely positive that you didn’t need to return the same way you came.
I think I wandered around exploring several different roads, probably four or five or six? All ending with similar barriers except I think that first one where I purposefully decided not to continue?
Gosh I don’t remember now… But I think I purposefully turned back on that first one. Maybe there had been a big mud puddle I didn’t want to go through… I don’t remember for sure. But I know I was concerned about continuing along the road west, because it would mean a very long drive back east for my trip tomorrow.
🤔
🤷
As I continued to explore, I saw what looked like the possibility of being able to go back east towards civilization but on the other side of the lake, so I headed that direction.
I stopped for a little while to snap some pictures in a beautiful area that had what looked like might be a cave in the middle of this braided river area.
So I walked over, doing a little bit of rock hopping to clear the river without getting my feet wet this time.
I snapped a bunch of pictures, some of them really pretty, but I think a lot of them led so, as I was unable to tell if they were any good because of the dimness of the screen against the brightness of the light outside, (despite it being cloudy).
Eventually, I made my way over to a little narrow strip of land with a canal full of beautiful blue water on one side and the lake on the other.
There were actually I think two other cars? parked there, one gentleman across the water a little way fishing and the other likely fishing from a boat that I could see off in the distance toward the far shore.
Incredibly, I had reception at that spot, and I ended up having a wonderful, and fairly long video conversation on Google meet with my sister Heather. 😊
Alas, though it was getting late in the day, and to be smart, I needed to head back to make sure I was going to be good to go for my trip to the airport tomorrow.
So I started to drive back the way that I came, but there was a road that seemed to maybe allow me to get back to civilization via the other side of the lake (and as I mentioned in the recent post, when I have the opportunity to take a new road , I like to take it).
Unfortunately, after winding through some massive piles of tree leftovers, the road I was hoping to take along the other side of the lake ended in a pond. 🙃
I could see there were tracks going into the pond, but… my little van has no snorkel. And her shoes are running shoes, not hiking boots. 🙃
So I gave up and headed back to civilization the way I had come, snapping pictures of the beautiful scenery along the way, as always, and doing just a bit more exploring of side roads 🙃 before descending out of the canyon and into civilization.
There were a bunch of freedom camping places relatively nearby but still fairly far from Christchurch.
Being late in the day, I didn’t want to risk driving to any of the ones near Christchurch, as I didn’t want to have to worry about showing up only to find them already filled.
But neither did I want to be super far away from Christchurch.
I eventually settled on one that was relatively far away from Christchurch, but still closer than any of the others that weren’t right next to Christchurch. I drove to that one, gratefully finding that I was the only one there.
I had yet to make my last two accommodation bookings for the Taveuni portion of my trip to Fiji, so I made sure to do that before crashing for the night.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 