September Road Trip

Because the Hamilton New Zealand Temple is so far for the people of New Zealand to get to, many of the Stakes and Districts (Mission areas) elect to have 2 temple weeks each year.  {Note: the length of the two island is about 1300 miles long, and it would take 28 hours to drive the length, including the ferry ride between the 2 islands} Our Stake had one the last week of September. We got permission to go outside of our Mission (it is the south 1/3 of the north island & all of the south island) to go with our Stake to the Temple. We also took the opportunity to travel to Cody's home, just north of Auckland for the weekend. It is about 400 miles away. That doesn't seem like too much in US freeway miles, but in New Zealand, it is an adventure. The highways all go through each town along the way, and you slow to 50 kph (30 mph) in each one. The highest posted speed is 100 kph (about 64 mph). The highway engineers must have paid the contractors extra for each curve that they could add to a stretch of road, as there are very few straight stretches of highway, except when paralleling some fields.  It took us 9.5 hours to get there. And we get to drive a used Chevy Cruze (not that comfortable). We were SO glad to arrive.

But it really was a beautiful drive (even the white knuckle parts). We crossed a desert area, drove inside an old volcano, next to a beautiful lake (Lake Taupo), and saw so much beautiful farmland.

We stopped to stretch at Taihape. Of course, someone in the car immediately found a quilt shop to browse in. Luckily they were out of gumboots (like rubber boots or muck boots in the US)

We drove around the west side of Lake Taupo, which is a huge abandoned volcanic crater. 

We stopped to eat a quick lunch here in a small rest stop. The clouds make this photo harder to see, but all the low clouds is really steam vents. The lake photo was taken from here too.

We had showers off and on the rest of the way into Auckland, so didn't take more photos until we got to our destination---Cody & JoEllen's!!

This turned out to be the best day to walk on the beach until Monday. It was so nice, and seemed much warmer than Wellington.

This photo looks like the 3 stooges, but it was supposed to be the impersonation of looking manly on Manly beach. Oh well....