(written on April 2nd from notes)
Unsurprisingly, I was up and out late today, not leaving the parking lot until almost 10:45. 😅
It was a little rainy but only light rain.
Driving away, I decided to stop back off at the O’Sullivan’s bridge over the Bull River to check out the Gorge in the daytime.
Today, looking down, it did seem like maybe it actually was higher than Hokitika Gorge. Super hard to tell, though. I also think that there gets to be a point where far is just… far? 🙃
I don’t know. 🤷
As I stood on the bridge looking over, a gentleman pulled up next to me with his window rolled down and let me know that a huge storm was rolling in and to make sure I stayed away from the river.
My back being the way that it is, I wasn’t going to be jumping in anyway, but many thanks to the gentleman for apprising me of the situation, as I hadn’t been looking at the weather forecast. 🙏
I continued on my way, taking pictures here and there.
I stopped off in Glenhope to avail myself of the public toilets, and then I purposefully planned a backroads scenic route toward Tākaka, staying as close to the mountains as I possibly could.
I stopped off at a spot labeled on Google Maps as Blue Gum Swimming Hole, but once there, after reading a little bit more about it, apparently it was pretty much a nothingburger… not even a place to swim. 🤷
With the weather being less than stellar, anyway, I decided to just continue my way all the way up and over Tākaka Hill down the other side, and all the way to Paines Ford.
The water level was a fair bit lower than what it was when I was here two months ago. Somewhere between a foot and 18 in lower, I think. About the distance from my elbow to my stretched out fingertips.
The light rain made the scramble along the ledge to Acid Test a little more dicey, as there was a wet slippery spot, that, had I slipped, would have sent me, and my cell phone (unless I the mental awareness sufficient to toss my cell phone onto the ledge as I fell) into the water below.
Fortunately, I made it without incident. 🙏
The shallower water, combined with the fact that nobody else was out there, combined with the drizzly weather kept me from enjoying my little spot to its fullest potential. 🙃
The rain began picking up fairly significantly, and I headed into town to unload some of my recycling and to fill up my water bottles, getting fairly wet in the process, all as both the recycling bins and the water filling spout are out in the weather. 🙃
Gratefully, I have a fully working heater now. 😎
It was nice to unload a bunch of recycling, and nice to get all of my water bottles filled up, so as to not have to be thinking about where to get water next.
It wasn’t so nice to need to fill up on gas only a day after filling up yesterday–especially with the prices being as they are. 😅
To my surprise and delight, after stopping in the local Fresh Choice grocery store to satiate my sweet tooth, I happened to notice a bin with a sign on it indicating that it was for soft plastic recycling.
Wahoo!!! 🥳
I’ve been carrying around my leftover soft plastic for months now, thinking that I might have needed to wait all the way until I got back to the North Island before I could dispose of a trash bag full.
Recycling while living in a van is rather inconvenient, space wise. 🙃
But with all of my recycling disposed of, and my trash as well, my van is starting to feel a fair bit more spacious. 😆
With night falling along with the rain, I headed back down the road to Uruwhenua Reserve, where I spent the next several hours veging.
I don’t know if it was the same people who were there two months ago when I was here last, but what looked like a semi-permanent tent had been set up, with people living it up underneath, playing music rather loudly until after midnight. 😶
Gratefully, I have my headphones to block the sound. Hopefully, the other campers who, like me, were simply there to spend the night once or twice or a few times and who were not part of that noisy/disrespectful group also had something to mitigate the sound.
There had been a similar group (or perhaps the same one) when Nick the Viking and I had been there. At that time, however, they shut the music and drumming and whatnot off around 9:00 or 9:30… reasonable, respectful.
Not this time. 🙃
Fun to be back up north at Paines Ford. It’s another place that feels a little bit like home. 😊
Oh! Though I’ve been absolutely terrible in my journal writing lately, I did get a catch-up journal entry written today. 🙃
🥳
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 