I really don’t want to write this journal entry, but how am I going to get back in the habit if I don’t get back in the habit? 😅
So here we go…
We slept in a fair bit this morning, grateful for the sleep, the cool night, and not getting overheated early by the beating down of the sun.
I guess I actually didn’t sleep all that well. I slept where my feet normally go, and the padding isn’t very good at that particular point on my “bed,” so I woke up a lot more frequently than usual.
But whatever.
Murphy’s law, since I drove to a place and parked in a place so as to be prepared for rain, if it came, so as not to be stranded, it didn’t rain at all last night, so I could have stayed in a different spot or parks differently than I did.
But better safe than sorry.
And I guess I could have changed the direction I parked, which would have resolved the issue I had last night, except I didn’t realize I was having the issue until I was already in the middle of it. 🙃
Anyway, I spent some time rinsing out some socks, cleaning up a bit, avoiding sand flies, and doing a little bit of journal catch-up work.
Started driving back along the road, the way I had come, snapping some pictures here and there.
For whatever reason, I had dust billowing into the van if I drove down the dirt road quickly.
But why? 🤔
And it got pretty thick if I went fast. 😕
I cracked my windows to keep the dust flying back out of the vehicle, and I tried turning my AC (blower) off to see if that solved anything, but it didn’t.
🤔
I stopped off for a little while at the place where I had repaired my tire last night, eating some breakfast, continuing to work on my backlog of unfinished journal entries.
It was a beautiful morning, nice to see the tops of the mountains.
I didn’t want to stop and work on the issue with the dust in the van, but it dawned on me that I didn’t know how often I was going to be driving on dry dirt roads, so it made sense to try and figure it out now instead of putting it off until later.
About that time, I had a faint recollection that perhaps the issue might have to do with my cabin air filter being clogged, so I unloaded everything that was on the passenger front, trash, recycling, water, etc, removed my glove box, and pulled out my cabin air filter.
It was indeed quite dusty, but it didn’t seem dirty enough to cause the issue.
Still, I spent a good little while banging it out to try and get as much dust out of the filter as possible; And amazingly, when I started driving down the dirt road again, there wasn’t anymore dust. 🎉
I spend a little bit of time looking for places that I might be interested in visiting, having not done much in the way of planning for the south half of the South Island, but I found a little walk relatively nearby called the Big Tree Walk, and headed on over.
After availing myself of the bathroom, I spent a little time on my phone, as I had phone reception again for the first time in a little while, spending a good little bit of time helping my friend Malaki with a customer situation that was challenging.
After battling a couple of different business startups, he decided to start a mobile diesel mechanic business, and he’s been doing super well since he started.
The big tree walk was exactly as detailed, a walk to a thousand-year-old, enormous tree with a nearly 30 foot circumstance, I think?
An absolute beast of a tree.
From there, I headed over to the Orari River Access Point. It wasn’t there was anything specific I wanted to see, other than just driving to that particular area to add to the visual understanding I have of this particular region in New Zealand.
It did turn out to be quite the beautiful little place, a dead end road going up a canyon with what would normally be a turquoise river had it not been for recent rainfall that I personally didn’t experience but that added enough rain to the water shed in that area to turn the river a bit greenish instead of the deep turquoise that you could tell it normally is after dry spells.
There was a beautiful little waterfall coming off the mountain side into the river, and I snapped some pictures and wandered around a little bit after spending a good little bit of time again working on journal catch up.
Beautiful spot. 😊
Then I headed over to the town of Geraldine, grabbing gas at the only gas station that had a pay-at-the-counter option; and from there, it was over to the local grocery store to top up my food stores.
I think I got to the grocery store somewhere around 6:00? I don’t remember for sure, but I didn’t leave until something like 9:30, spending a whole bunch of time trying to get myself caught up on my journaling.
I’ve been adding a lot more pictures to my journal entries for these last entries. Not sure why the change, but… that’s what I’ve been doing today. 🙃
After using one of the local public bathrooms in town somewhere around 10:00, I continued finishing up an old journal entry and then drove here to this little spot where I’m at now (Te Moana Gorge, Camp 3), where I find myself, unsurprisingly, the only vehicle here. 🙃
Ok, I did it. I wrote the journal entry for today when I didn’t want to. 🙃
💪
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 