(written on the 9th and 10th from notes taken previously)
A sand fly bit my foot first thing this morning.
I must be back in New Zealand. 🙃
But I also did indeed wake up to a view of Edoras. 😁
It was relatively early in the morning, so I think there were only two or three other cars in the trailhead car park when I got there, and I was grateful that there was a bathroom to use to dispose of Micro John. 🙏
Although absolutely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, it is fun to see the filming locations for recognizable scenes in the Lord of the Rings. 🙃
I snapped a bunch of pictures of Mount Sunday (Edoras), a beautiful river flowing through the valley, a single-person swing bridge, the surrounding mountains, etc.
Absolutely beautiful. ☺️
Even more so in the winter, I’d wager.
If you are familiar with the Lord of the Rings and the scenes at Edoras, there’s one where Eowyn (spelling?) is looking out across the valley, and the flag of Rohan tears from its pole in the strong wind and flies away, landing outside the gates just as Aragorn is coming in.
That particular scene was unscripted, the flag unexpectedly tearing away during the shoot.
It was perfect, of course.
And I now have first-hand experience, as the wind can certainly be quite something up there! It was howling at the top, and in unscripted homage to the movie, the wind sucked a clean piece of toilet paper from one of my pockets, and I noticed just as it floated away on the wind like the flag of Rohan. 🙃
That was cool. 😁
I retrieved the toilet paper, crumpled it up, and stuck it in my pocket, only to have the wind a couple of minutes later open my pocket back up and suck the toilet paper right back out onto the wind, fluttering away.
And then it took my hat. 😆
I didn’t bother trying to put the toilet paper back in my pocket this time. I just held it the rest of the time I was up there at the top–which was a good long time.
I just sort of fat at the far west end of the hill, sitting on the rocks, taking in the beautiful vista in front of me.
I’m grateful that I was there early, the only person on the top when I got there, and the only person for a good little while–able to take pictures without lots of people.
There’s that timing thing again. 🙃
As the morning wore on, there were many others who came up–couples, retired folks, families with kids…
By the time I got back to the car park, it was slammed and overflowing onto the main dirt road.
Being who I am, wanting to explore further, I continued up the dirt road to see how far up the braided river I could go before my van just couldn’t go further.
Unfortunately, this time I got stopped by private property, as the road ended in a couple of stations with signs prohibiting further travel, so I simply couldn’t go any further (at least not without permission, which I wasn’t interested in requesting at the time).
So it was back down the dirt road where I had come, and I perched my little van on the side of the road on a little pull out for a while just taking in the views.
In fact, I ended up veging in that general area for the rest of the night. 🙃
Beautiful vista as the sun went behind the mountains. 😊
When it was time to actually sleep sleep, I managed to get my van up a pretty gnarly dirt road that went up one of the mountains themselves. I went for a good little ways until my van just didn’t have the components necessary nor the ground clearance to go further, and I turned around, found us bought next to a bush just off the road (in case someone, for some reason, needed that “road” in the middle of the night).
I veged out in front of my phone a bit longer, and then called it a night.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 