No skiing, Mt. Doom and The Ride

Hello from New Zealand. The Sunday night tradition is to wrap up the weekend with a review of pictures and a new post on the blog. I hope everyone has had a great week. We miss all our friends and family. Being away always reminds one how much they are loved and how important friends and family are.

OK, enough of that! Back to the week's events. Work is going well for me. I am having to find my place among my colleagues and figure out the system here in New Zealand. The general practitioner has less autonomy in some respects, such as tests they can order, but needs to deal with a very wide array of illness and trauma. I sutured the largest laceration of my life this week. Wonderful older woman, but I made her very ill with antibiotics.

Amie will be able to get started again this week with the job search. The kids are back from their 2wk holiday. There are some offers, but nothing too exciting yet. I think she should just continue to cater to my every need. She is not too keen on this idea.

On Thursday we had our second Tsunami warning. In typical cautious fashion, Amie and I went for a walk on the beach. No big waves there. I don't know what all the hype was about.

Friday rolled around and I could not be happier. We planned to go surfing after work, but a huge wind storm came in across the north island. Gusts up to 50-60mph with sustained winds of 20mph for the better part of the night rattled throughout the house. Surf was washed out. However, I was greeted by a supreme meal that Amie prepared. That and some wine made the night OK.

So, Friday night's plans got a little washed out, but we made the best of it. We were set to get up early Saturday morning and drive 2.5hrs to the center of the island to catch some spring skiing. All this rain that we have been complaining of has the mountains at record snow levels (2 meters of snow- that's over 6 feet!). We planned to ski Saturday and then head down to Wellington to pick up the new Ride on Sunday. As you can probably tell, plans here in New Zealand are often changed

Saturday morning we realized we had not picked up a Bank check for the car. We had to drive 1hr out of the way to a bank Saturday and pick up a check. We then we headed up to the mountain ( better known as Mt Doom in The Lord of the Rings).

Now, it is hard to explain the how beautiful this drive was. Hopefully the pics will tell the story a little. We drove 2hrs north and then set eyes on Mt. Ruapehu. This is a 9000ft peak, and active volcano. As we set up the mountain road, the weather was still clear with 55 degree temps and partly cloudy skies. 20 minutes later, we were at 4000 feet staring at a closed road sign. AUGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! It is now 12 o'clock and were already dealing with only a half day of skiing. Now we had gone all this way for nothing....or so we thought!

As we parked the car, we decided to wander up the axis road. The snow level increased with every step. All the Kiwis and tourists were making the best of the closed mountain by setting up snowboard parks on the side of the road, having snow ball fights, sledding and generally just enjoying themselves.

As we continued up the road, we ran into a young couple that informed us there was a great hike with a beautiful waterfall just up the road. That was all we needed. With only a pair of tennis shoes on my feet and no socks and Amie only slightly more prepared, we headed off on a 4mile hike, and it was worth it! You should be able to see the pics. The air was 40degrees, but there was snow falling. The sun was ducking in and out of the clouds and we would steel a glimpse of the peak from time to time. We tramped through an alpine field, over a river and back. It was awesome!

New Zealand keeps handing us diversions. I would call them road blocks, but they are not. We are constantly being shown wonders, not the ones we were looking for, but who cares.

The rest of the weekend was great. We found Mt. Doom, from the Lord of the Rings, actually turns out we were in Mordor. Who knew it could be so nice with a little snow.

Our new Car is "bad". Drives nice and has lots of room. We can now start the real road trips. Back at home tonight, we found most of our newly planted veggies still alive, so we have that going for us.

This week may have some surf, if I can just figure out the wind.

Work will be my first one with a full schedule. Should be busy.

I love having all the followers. I am glad folks are commenting on the blog. Thanks for not making fun of my writing. I hope to improve with time.

Oh, in other news, How about those Yankee's. I have to watch highlights, but I am keeping up. I hope the Sox can get their ship right. The world series will not mean as much if we don't beat the Sox first.

Take care all. I think Amie will have something to add to this.

Hi everyone! Hope you enjoyed Chris' entry. Well, I just proofed it ( can't help it! It's the teacher in me) and what he said covered about everything! The hike was very unexpected and great! It was true Heatherton style. As we started down the trail, I was laughing at Chris because he had no socks and tennis shoes on. I had just my hiking shoes on, but a pair of winter boots would have kept the feet a little drier. We also had no food or water on our hike, so we just ate snow! Delicious! We were wet and starving when we got back to the car! Luckily, we had packed some food, so we just sat in the car barefoot and chowed down while the heated was blasting on our soaked shoes.

After we dried up and fed our bellies, the axis road was now open, so we drove to the ski area. Lots of snow and the drive was crazy! As we drove down, I took some pictures that we added. Near the top was just covered with snow, but as you drove about 5 minute down the road, you were is a tropical forest.

I have been driving Chris a little crazy with all these Lord of the Rings sightings we must do. After we spotted Mt Doom, there was another Ring sighting I told him we must do. It was near the bottom of Mt. Doom. Another hike! About 5 minutes into our 2nd hike to seek Frodo, Chris was having about enough of my Frodo seeking! But, we ended up finding the trail that Gandof rode in on when he went into the Shire.

It was a fun-filled weekend and it was also great to get a touch of winter since we are going into summer soon! Hope you enjoy the blog and pictures!