Going home the long way
So that explains why, true to our usual long detour form, we drove from Mt Cook to Christchurch via Central Otago 🙂
The next morning, after a breakfast of farm-cured bacon (I like visiting Dad, he’s got lots of farmer friends who give him good meat!), and searching the garage for a large piece of bright yellow snow-foam (the purpose of which will be made clear in good time…), we set out for home, taking the back way through the Pig Route and enjoying a slow trip with lots of book releasing along the way: Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron in Omakau, Backtrack by Joseph Hansen in Oturehua, The Later Adventures of Tom Jones by Bob Coleman in Wedderburn, Eleni by Nicholas Gage, Of the Farm by John Updike, and The Winged Man by Moyra Caldecott on the shoe fence, The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams and The Potato Factory by Bryce Courtenay in Ranfurly, The Cats by Joan Phipson in Palmerston (by the cat statue, of course!), The Paradise Tree by Diana L Paxson in Maheno (in a tree in the churchyard), It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It by Robert Fulghum (at the fire station) and To Play the Fool by Laurie R King in Oamaru, and Zorn by Jonah Jones in Arowhenua.
The weekend may not have gone entirely according to plan, but we had a lot of fun and a lot of adventures anyway, so I reckon it counts as a highly successful weekend 🙂