24June06 Joan and Wayland San Francisco

24June06 Saturday

 

23June06 Joan and Wayland San Francisco

23June06 Friday

Today our main activity was to rent a bicycle built for two and ride across the golden gate bridge.  We had talked to an outfit on Fisherman's Wharf that rents bicycles called Blazing Saddles on Thursday and decided that we had to give it a try.  We also found out why they call them Blazing Saddles as it reminded me of the 30 mile ride that I took with Joe down on the Los Angeles beaches a few days earlier.

The people at Blazing Saddles said that the ride was no problem and easy as it's level over across the bridge and then downhill all the way down into Sausalito on the north end of the bridge.  This wasn't quite true.  There was a steep uphill push to get onto the bridge on the south end but not all that bad.  The weather was somewhat sunny down on the wharf and nice but as we looked up towards the bridge it was covered with fog.  As we got closer to the bridge it was not only fog but a strong wind.  I decided to buy a jacket at the bridge gift center before starting across the bridge.  I was glad that I did.  Looking up at the base of the towers it was not possible to see the top of the towers due to the fog.  It was surprising to hear a helicopter go beneath us under the bridge and disappear into the fog.  Apparently he could see the water but we couldn't see all that much.

We eventually made it across the bridge after many stops to watch the sailboats underneath us, watch a couple of workers with harnesses enter the base of one of the towers with a piece of steel to do some work up on top, and to take a lot of pictures and video along the way.

It was really windy when we got to the north end and had to walk the bikes for a ways even though it was level.  In a short ways it became fairly steep going down into Sausalito and the bike trail follows the highway into town.  Our hope was that the brakes would work at this point.  After getting down to the beach area in Sausalito the sun was out and the hills to the back of town cut the wind and it was a perfect place for lunch at a streetside cafe. 

In the morning the city had declared today as a "Spare the Air Day" and all the city public transportation was free.  We found our way to the public ferry dock and took the ferry back to pier 1 in SF.  The bike rental company had provided ferry tickets to us but we didn't have to use them and it saved us $16.  The penalty was that we had to ride from pier 1 back to pier 39 to turn in the bikes but it was also a nice ride and we got to see more of the bay.

We were going to take a ride on the cable cars after the bike ride but they were also free and the lines were so long that it would have taken over an hour to get onto one so that was given up and we did a little more touring of the wharf area and spent some time in the National Park Headquarters there looking at some of their exhibits.  Quite a bit of the bay area is National Park.  During WWII the bay area was a staging area for over 1.5 million troups and a lot of the old barracks are now part of the park buildings.  A lot of the land has been reclaimed and converted to park area.

The pictures show some of the bay, the ride across the bridge, fog over the bridge that we rode through, and a couple pictures of Sausalito.

 

22June06 Joan and Wayland California

22June06 Thursday

Today we continued our trek to San Francisco.  It has been a relaxing trip to just drive until we felt like stopping to look at something or to stop for the night.  We didn't set a schedule for ourselves only to be at the airport in Santa Ana for our flight at noon on Wednesday June 28th.

We stopped at a couple places along the way today to "smell the flowers".  From Santa Cruz we headed north on Hwy 1.  We stopped at Pigeon Point lighthouse which is a postcard view.  Lighthouses, as with a lot of other historical buildings, are suffering deterioration and are expensive to keep as historical places.  As I recall the lighthouse area has been designated a state park but they are looking for funding to preserve the area. 

 Adjacent to the lighthouse is a hostel with a terrific view of the Pacific and shore.  The private room with bath is $55 for a night. We headed on up towards SF but at just past Half Moon Bay the coast road is closed due to a slide and we had to detour inland to I280 for the rest of the trip SF.  The GPS that came on the rental car has been an asset and probably prevented a lot of arguments between Joan and I.  It took us right to the hotel at the corner of Lombard and Van Ness. 

As we eventually found out Lombard St. has one of the major attractions of SF.  It is the curvy street that is often seen in movies on one side of the hill and the other is the steep 40% grade street that is often in race scenes with the cars coming down the hill and being propelled into the air as they go across the cross streets.  On our first walking excursion we walked down to Fisherman's Wharf and then up and down Lombard St.  All in all it was a pretty good hike.

In the pictures are scenes of the flowers along the coast, Pigeon Pt. lighthouse, beware of cat signs on an apartment building gate, and photos of Lombard St.

21June06 Joan and Wayland California

21June06 Wednesday

Today we left San Luis Obispo and headed further up the coast.  About 40 miles north of San Luis is San Simeon and we stopped at the Hearst Castle welcome center.  We thought about going to see the castle but decided instead to see the National Geographic movie they have about the Hearst family and the eventual building of the castle.  The original Hearst came to California during the gold rush hoping to find gold.  Long story short is that he found silver instead and made a fortune.  With his money he began buying land and I think that in the end had about 85,000 acres along the coast. He also got into publishing and became quite successful with that.  Eventually his son built the castle and lived a pretty lavish life there.

North of San Simeon it becomes pretty desolate as you drive along the Santa Lucia Mountains.  The Big Sur area is beautiful and very rugged.  In this area was a place where elephant seals have taken up home.  There must have been about fifty or more laying side by side on the beach soaking up the sun.  North of there you come to Monterey and home of the Pebble Beach Country Club.  There is a 17 mile drive along the Monterey peninsula which has a $8.50 charge.  The drive is beautiful with fantastic homes and three or four major golf courses.  We stopped at Pebble Beach and walked out to the 18th hole and shot a few pictures.  Very high class stuff here.

From Monterey we drove to Santa Cruz and stayed there for the night.

20June06 Tuesday

20June06 Tuesday

Today we left Redondo Beach and headed up the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) with the intent of eventually getting to San Francisco.  We stopped at Venice/Muscle Beach which is just 20 miles north of Redondo to check out the action there.  Venice is famous for it's street performers and other oddities.  They do have a nice park area there and quite a large weightlifting area in the Muscle area.  Also lots of souvenir stores along the beach with every kind of T-shirt imaginable.

From there we followed the coast highway which does have some very beautiful scenery.  It's mostly 2 lane highway and hugs the side of the mountains.  We drove through Ventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and then to San Luis Obispo where we decided to stay the night.  San Luis was a beautiful town and has a lot of hotels and restaurants.

19June06 Monday

19June06 Monday

Today we went out to breakfast at a pancake house next to the Palo Verdes Inn and had an excellent breakfast.  Joe and I got the bikes out of the furnace room at the hotel where they keep them.  We headed down to the beach on the bikes and got on the bike path for our ride down the beach.  The paved path is really great for walking, biking, roller blading, etc.   It's about 10 feet wide with a center line to maintain traffic directions.  There was little traffic on the path until later in the afternoon but since it was Monday we didn't have to worry too much about traffic.  We rode from where the path begins at Redondo Beach north to Marina Del Ray which is about 15 miles.  Along the way you go past probably a couple hundred volleyball courts on the sand beaches, a huge power generating plant, a city campground filled with RV's, under the approach for the main runways for LAX, and enough other diversions to keep you interested. 

Along the way we passed the handmade wooden bicycle in the attached photo also the one man submarine. 

Joan and Bev met us at a restaurant in the Marina Del Ray area called the Warehouse.  The place had a lot of atmosphere and we ate out on the porch area overlooking the marina filled with sailboats and a blue sky background.  The Warehouse apparently was the site where the restaurant scene was filmed in the movie Meeting the Fockers.  They had a lot of photos of movie stars photographed in the restaurant hanging on the walls.

Joe and I made it back to Redondo Beach completing about 30 miles on the bikes about 6PM and had tea with Joan and Bev.  Joan and Bev raved about the napoleons served there.  Apparently they have them shipped in from Italy. 

After Joan applied the icepack to the body part I sit on things were fine once again (just kidding).

18June06 Sunday

18June06 Sunday

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Today we went to Joan’s uncle’s church, the Indio Church of Christ, where he is the minister and then went to lunch with him.  We left from <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Indio and headed down to Redondo Beach.  It was another scorcher of a day with the temperature around 108 in Indio.  As we headed to the beach we had to keep turning up the temperature in the car and when we got to Redondo the temperature had dropped to around 72.  It seemed almost cold there.

 

Tomorrow morning a beach bicycle ride is planned for Joe and I and shopping for Joan and Beverly.

 

17June06 Saturday

17June06 Saturday

Today we drove from Ontario, Calif to Palm Desert.  It's amazing how the temperature increases as you get closer to the desert.  By the time we got to Joan's uncle Charlie's the temperature had gotten up to around 108.  The drive is interesting as you go down through the valley between the mountains to Palm Springs and on to Palm Desert. There are a few thousand wind powered generators and it's an amazing sight to see them spinning.

We visited with Joan's aunt and uncle for a while and then her cousin and his wife came by and we went out to lunch in Palm Desert.  From there we went over to my cousin Beverly and her husband Joe's place where they were having a graduation party for their granddaughter. 

It was a good day.

16June06 Friday

16May06 Friday

Los Angeles

Our flight arrived in LA at about 12:40PM after about 11 ½ hours in flight.  Flying back is shorter by about 2 hours with the prevailing winds helping.  Our first task was to rent a vehicle for our time in California and Hertz helped with that.  We reserved a car from the airport and then took the Hertz bus to their offsite terminal.  The scene there was interesting, there were about 20 agents renting cars as fast as possible.  The line stretched all through their labyrinth and almost out of the office.  They had a person there doing balloon animals to help entertain the kids.  After some wait we were finally ready to load up and head out to Palm Desert.

 

We followed the agents directions to find out way to I10 that heads east out of the LA area out to Palm Desert.  I10 goes out to Palm Desert and then on through Indio and eventually on to Phoenix.

 

After the stop and go traffic on the Interstate and driving for about an hour and a half we were ready for a rest stop and a bite to eat as now it was getting to be late afternoon.  I sure do miss traveling with having your own kitchen to raid and having your own toilet to use anytime you need it.

 

We stopped at an exit on I10 close to Baldwin Park and pulled into an “In and Out Hamburger” station.  After ordering and while standing there waiting for our order a “bloke” next to me asked how the hamburgers were at this place.  I said that we weren’t from there and were traveling through and didn’t know.  I asked where he was from recognizing an accent and he said that he was from New Zealand.  I told him that it was a coincidence as we had just arrived back from New Zealand that afternoon.  He said that he had just arrived also from New Zealand and after some conversation here it turned out that we were on the same plane.  It turned out that he and another guy had came from NZ and met up with two of their friends from Australia who had flown in from Australia on Qantas.  It was kind of a small world situation considering we both had made a random stop.

 

We drove on as far as Ontario but decided to stop for the evening as we were both tired and feeling the effects of travel.

15June06 Joan and Wayland

15June06 Thursday

This morning after failing to figure out a way to copy a feature video from a local television station that featured the Panoho family we said our goodbyes and headed on down to Auckland.  Hwy 1 is starting to be a little familiar as we passed through Warkworth, Orewa, Waipu, the Goat Island turnoff, Hwy 12 turnoff, etc.

We camped our last night at the Takapuna Holiday Park on the Takapuna Beach.  We walked a couple of blocks up town and ate at the Stonegrill.  Interesting place where you cook your food at your table on super heated stone blocks.  Joan had a sea food mix and I had a steak.  If you didn’t cook the food the way you like it’s your own darn fault.

 

Friday morning we had a beautiful sunrise over the Pacific and then during the morning while we were packing we watched a container ship come into the Auckland bay and also a couple other cargo ships come in.  There was a good sized twin mast sailboat sail out of the harbor.  We headed out to the KEA depot about 1:30PM and they had a driver take us to the airport.

 

We met up with Nancy and returned her suitcase to her that we had been holding until she got back from Australia.  Later we met with Donna the NZ GV team coordinator and returned the Habitat cell phone.  It was nice to see her again and thank her for all her help.  We eventually got checked through customs and met up with Roger and Marlayne who had just arrived from Cairns, Australia about an hour earlier.  It was good to see those team members once again and hear about their adventures in Australia.

 

We all took off on the 7:45PM Air New Zealand flight to Los Angeles.  A cool thing that Air New Zealand has put on their 747 that we rode on was a new entertainment system.  The system allowed each passenger to select from about 40 or 50 different movies, travel movies, or other types of video based entertainment.  You can play any one at any time, start, stop, pause, resume, etc.  Very cool.

 

Pictures include some of Dave and Anne Reyburn and Joan and I, a few of their house with one showing a rainbow directly over their house.

 

 

14June06 Joan and Wayland

14June06 Wednesday

Today we spent with the Reyburns.  Dave and Anne are key people in the operation of the Northland affiliate.  Dave is the chairman of the affiliate and also serves on the New Zealand national board for Habitat.  Dave has also served in local government as a councilman and deputy mayor of Whangerai.  Anne is instrumental in handling the arrangements for the global village teams that come to the Northland area to help with builds there.  The Reyburns give a lot of themselves to their church, community, and Habitat.

 

We had a very nice day with Dave and Anne.  Dave took me for a ride around town to see a number of homes that Habitat has built there.  While we were doing that Anne took Joan to do some shopping in town visiting a fabric store there.  After that we went for a ride out to the Whangerai Heads where the oil tankers from the middle east come to unload and also where they load wood chips onto Japanese ships for shipment to Japan.  It was a beautiful overview of the area. 

 

From the Heads we went on out to the Dave and Annes beach bach.  There we sampled guavas from the tree in their backyard.  We also saw there a NZ pigeon which are very large and colorful.  Anne says that they like to eat the guavas.  Their bach has a great view of the Pacific.

 

We returned to town and had dinner at a Thai restaurant and then returned home where the Northland board was coming for their board meeting that evening.  Dave had invited me to sit in on the meeting and it was a real privilege to be able to do that.  It was amazing that so many of the same issues that we discuss back in Portage County are the very same issues that were discussed this evening.  It was apparent that we all share the same problems and issues.

 

After a great day we retired to the KEA remorseful that tomorrow was our last full day in NZ and the realities of having to pack up began to sink in.

 

Pictures include guava tree with fruit, NZ pigeon.

13June06 Joan and Wayland

13June06 Tuesday

Tuesday we drove over to Paihia.  From there we took the ferry over to Russell where we revisited some of the museums.  I had not been to Pompallier so I went there.  The building was built in 1842 to house the Roman Catholic mission’s printing press.  The press was eventually printing 40,000 books in Maori.  The building had become a private home for a while but now has been converted back to it’s original state.  The history of the signing of the treaty with the Maori as explained by the tour guide there was very interesting.  Apparently Pompallier was instrumental in adding a couple of sentences to the treaty that provided the Maori to religious freedom.  Before that it had been a battle between the Church of England based on the Paihia side of the bay and the Catholics on the Russell side for control.  Each claimed the others were the heathens.  At one time Russell was described as the hellhole of the Pacific.

 

The weather in Russell was pretty miserable with strong gusty winds and periods of rain.  It was still the continuation of the storms that had hit NZ for the previous 4 or 5 days.  We took the ferry back to Paihia and then headed on down to Whangerai.

 

With some help on the phone with Dave Reyburn we found our way to their home and parked the KEA in their driveway.

 

Pictures include some of the leather making process used to make book bindings, Russell dock, etc.

12June06 Joan and Wayland

12June06 Monday

The news was forecasting bad storms today and during the night the storms did come in.  The winds were predicted to be anywhere from 30 up to 100 kms/hr depending on the area.  They announced on the morning news that the south island was getting 30 to 40cms of snow and many of the main roads were closed there.  On the north island Auckland was without power in most of the city.  We had some very strong winds that made driving the caravan hard to keep in a straight line on the highway and some rain at times that made visibility very low.  We stopped at a roadside park for a while to let the rain pass.  Eventually the sun came out some but was interspersed with rain showers and the wind gusts continued.

 

Today our plan was to travel from Matahohe on Hwy 12 over to the west coast and then up and around and if possible on over to Paihia.  We wanted to stop and see Tane Mahuta the 2000 year old kauri tree in the Waipoua Forest.  We started out and headed up to Dargaville which is one of the larger towns in that area.  The general area is the kumara capital of New Zealand and produces 80% of the kumara consumed in the country. 

 

We stopped by the Dargaville airport that we had stopped at last year just to see what was happening.  This was Monday and Saturday is the day of the flying club get-to-gathers and the weather was nasty so the place was abandoned.  The sheep that were there last were no wheres in sight.  Theclub is more than doubling the size of the building there and presumably it will be used as their training center.

 

Next we stopped in town at the Blah Blah Blah café and had lunch and then headed to the town museum.  The museum had a lot of local town history and artifacts.  They also have a lot of local maritime history.  They have the two masts of the Greenpeace boat that was bombed and sunk in the Auckland harbor in 1985.  They are mounted on the property close to the museum building and can be seen from quite a distance away.  One of the Greenpeace crew was killed in the episode.  It created a high level of friction between New Zealand and France.

 

From Dargaville we headed on up Hwy 12 to the Waipoua Forest protected reserve area.  There are quite a number of kauri trees remaining in the area and are now protected as are kauri trees everyone in New Zealand now.  The northland area was once the site of large forests of the kauri trees and which were harvested in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  We came upon a car parked along the park road with the hood up and a couple working under the hood.  Maggie, Darryl, and their grown son Jaimie were trying to cool the engine down.  Apparently the engine had heated up on the way up the hills in the park.  We gave them some water from the KEA to fill the radiator with and then we were both going down the road a ways to the Tane Mahuta tree.  They went ahead but when we got to the tree stop their hood was up again.  At this point we offered to take them on the KEA to look for a repair shop and some way of getting their car towed there.  Jaimie stayed with the car and the rest of us went in the KEA on up the highway about 10 kms where we found a gas station with a mechanic.  Darryl went with the mechanic who took a tow rope in his pickup truck back to try to tow the car in.  I was a little concerned  with them towing the car with a rope up and down the hills without the engine running and no power steering or power brakes.  As it turned out Jaimie had put more water in the radiator and gotten the car to the downhill section and was able to get it into the station without towing it. 

 

Eventually the mechanic got the cooling system purged of air and the engine presumable running OK.  We followed them to the next town where there was a hotel and the car ran fine.  We said goodbye and went on about 5 km or so where there was a campervan park and we checked in there for the night.  It seemed a good solution since it was a dark and rainy night and would have been a really tough drive to Paihia.

11June06 Joan and Wayland

11June06 Sunday

This morning we left the Manukau Top 10 Holiday Park and drove over to the Manukau Habitat home worksite that we had helped with.  We were curious to see what had been accomplished since we had left a week ago.  The wood house that we had worked on had the cladding installed since we left and the roof completed.  Also the cladding around the bottom of the foundation had been started and it is giving the house a more complete look.  The concrete house had the windows trimmed on the outside and has been spray painted outside giving the house a much more completed look.  Both houses are looking very nice.

 

We left Manukau and drove north up through Auckland.  We decided to go through Orewa and stop there for lunch along the beach.  We parked along the main street that runs along the beach and stopped in a café that had pastries and sandwiches and bought a few things.  They didn’t have coffee so we stopped at a café behind that place and got a short black and a cappuccino.  The couple who own the café were from the United States and had been truck drivers.  They knew the whereabouts of the Schneider truck depot out around Medina.

 

From Orewa we traveled on up Hwy 1 and made the turnoff in Warkworth out to Goat Island Marine Reserve.  There we took a glass bottom boat ride out around the island and got a very informative commentary by the operator.  We saw a lot of red snapper, a few manta rays, and some other colorful stripped fish whose name we don’t remember.  There were also a large number of shellfish and although we didn’t see any there is a large population of crayfish.  The operator said that the crayfish differ from lobster in that crayfish don’t have claws.  Apparently they are about the same size.  There is a large area that is part of the Reserve covering a few thousand acres.  Every living thing in the area is protected and you are not allowed to even take shells from the area.

 

From Goat Island we went on north on Hwy 1 and then turned west on Hwy 12 and stopped for the night at Matahohe which is the location of the Kauri Museum.  We haven’t decided if we are going to stop there in the morning since we had been there last year but it is a very interesting place.

10June06 Up to Auckland

10June06 Saturday

Last night we stayed at a Kiwi Campervan Park about 6 km up Taranaki from New Plymouth.  The campground is on farm site and during the summer you can hang out with the farmer and help milk his herd of over 100 cows.  He freshens all the cows at the same time so during the winter he doesn’t do any milking so we missed out on it.  We were the only ones in the park for the night and had the place completely to ourselves.  The bathrooms were very nice and one of the baths had a bathtub so Joan was really happy about that.  The kitchen was nice and the laundry was on the honor system and you left the coins in a box on the wall.

 

We had to go back through New Plymouth to pick up Hwy 3 and happened to see a Saturday Market going on and stopped to check it out.  There were vendors there with a wide variety of items for sale out of their trunks or pickups.  Joan bought a bouquet of flowers to put in the camper.  Then we drove by the model RR club facilities and took a couple of pictures of their place.  They apparently have a very small gauge steam train on which they give rides on Sundays.  Missed out on that one.

 

We left New Plymouth and drove on up to the Auckland suburb of Manukau and we checked into the Top 10 campground that we had stayed at when we were on the build there.  We went down to the local video store and rented a couple of videos, picked up a couple sandwiches at the Subway next door and headed back to the campground.  Will use some of the popcorn that our teammates left.

 

Today was a little longer drive as we did around 350 kms.  We didn’t take “The Forgotten World Highway” this time and had a pleasant drive.  Along the west shore of the Tasman Sea we went by an installation that apparently is generating methane.  We didn’t stop but now I am curious about what is going on there.  The company is called Methanex.  The map also had a spot offshore in that area marked as “synthetic fuel generation” but no other description.  Will have to ask around about that.

 

Tomorrow we will probably head back up north of Auckland.   We are planning to be back to see the Reyburns on Tuesday.

9June06 New Plymouth

9June06 Friday

We spent today in New Plymouth and made a couple of trips up the side of  Mt. Taranaki.  This morning we stopped at a garden in town that had a beautiful display of ferns plus a lot of other plants.  They had a number of greenhouses which they called a fernery and they were all connected together with tunnels.  They had numerous orchids, azaleas, rhodos, and other plants.  We walked the grounds admiring the wide variety of trees for a while and then decided to drive up to the Pukeiti rhododendron gardens.

At Pukeiti they said that there are approximately 1,000 known varieties of rhodos and that they have 800 of those on display there.  The gardens cover 1,000 acres and include 20 kms of walking trails.  They have just 3 gardeners that keep the gardens in tip-top condition.  The walking paths through the gardens are wide and mowed just like a golf course.  We were really amazed at the way the gardens were laid out and manicured.

 

After leaving Pukeiti we drove up to the Egmont National Park Center which is just above the tree line on Takanaki.  Unfortunately we never did get a clear view of the mountain.  The clouds had settled in on the mountain and we drove through some rain, sleet, and a few flakes of snow when we were up there and the sun just didn’t want to drive the clouds away.  We bought a couple of postcards with views on a nice clear day.

 

Late afternoon we ate at a restaurant in downtown on the Tasman shore call Salt.  Joan ordered a ribeye steak and I had the lamb shank.  They were both very large meals and Joan’s steak was large and thick.  We asked if we could take the leftovers with us but the waitress said that there were new laws in NZ that prevented them from allowing takeouts in a sitdown restaurant.  After some pleading the waitress snuck us a plastic bag and when no one was looking Joan packed away the steak and we left.  Apparently restaurants have had problems with people not properly taking care of the food that they carry out and it has caused some health issues.  Carryouts apparently fall under a different set of rules.

 

Tomorrow we head back north.

8June06 To New Plymouth

8June06 Thursday

Today we drove from Taupo down Hwy 1 along the east side of Lake Taupo down to Turanga at the south end of the lake.  This was reverse direction to the two times that we have driven this route previously heading north.  We wanted to go over to Mt. Taranaki and New Plymouth on the west coast.  We took Hwy 43 which appeared to be a relatively docile route on the map but our curiosity was aroused by a sign saying that it was “The Forgotten World Highway” and no fuel for 150 km when we started down it.  I told Joan that it should be an interesting ride.

 

It turned out to be very interesting indeed.  I had no need for gears 5 and 6 on this road as we excercised 2,3,and 4 a lot.  It had hairpin turns where you could see your tail lights going around the corners.  It also had the most vertical sheep pastures of any place we have been in New Zealand.  The hills or mountains were the beautiful vibrant green with fine lawn appearance that we have seen before but what a display it was today.  The 150 km took most of the day and I can’t say that I would ever take this road again.  I counted 11 one lane bridges over the stretch and some one way sealed portion of the road and in general the two lanes were pretty narrow.  Then there was the stretch of about 15 km or so through a gorge that was unsealed and only one lane.  We won’t tell KEA about that one.  Then there was the tunnel named the “Hobbit Hole” that looked very hand carved with the sign that said 4.5 meter clearance at the entrance.  Let’s see, how high did KEA say this campervan was?  Well we kind of sucked in our collective breaths as if this would make it smaller and we made it through without leaving any paint or pieces of fiberglass along the sides.

 

The other interesting thing was when we would see a sign saying so and so’s saddle ahead.  There was about 5 or 6 of these and we soon learned that it meant a lot of steep hairpin turns at about 15 km/hr ahead going up and then the same in reverse going down the other side.  We started to groan when we saw these.

 

Well we did make it to New Plymouth late in the afternoon and in a perverted sense we did enjoy the drive on the “Forgotten World Highway”.  I decided that they call it this because after getting through it you want to forget about it but believe me we won’t.

 

As we got close to Mt. Taranaki we couldn’t see much of it because of cloud cover but as we got close to New Plymouth we did see the top of it above the clouds.  It could be a twin to Mt. Fiji I believe.  We eventually found the Top 10 Holiday Park after being lost for a while in town and settled in for the night.  We hope for a clear day tomorrow so that we can see more of the mountain.  If it’s not we probably will head on north towards Auckland and back to the northland area.

7June06 Taupo

7June06 Wednesday

Today we spent in Taupo doing a little relaxing and sightseeing.  We started out by driving up to the Volcanic Center to see what they had on display.  It was informative with a large topographic model mounted horizontally so that you could see and visualize the topography of a large area of the north island that has a lot of thermal and volcanic activity.  The regions of Rotorua and Taupo are especially active areas.  We viewed four movies that showed the results of a number of earthquakes that were significant in the amount of destruction and magnitude.  They also had a listing of seismographic data of activities for the last couple of months.  It appears that about every 3 or 4 days there is some type of recordable activity.  Of some note on the list was an earthquake of over 7 on the reicter scale in early May that occurred on one of the South Pacific islands.  We had heard about this one the day after it occurred and that there had been some concern about a tsunami that was going to hit New Zealand but it never materialized.  We only heard about it after the fact.

 

We left there and went over to the area where the steam wells are that feed steam to the geothermal power generating plant just north of Taupo.  It wasn’t marked but we found the road that goes back to the area where the steam wells are that supply the plant.  We ended up at an overview where you could see a number of the producing wells and all the pipes that carry the steam to the generating plant.  Thewells are drilled to approximately 2000 meters deep and they produce steam at 230-260 degrees C.  The steam is piped asfar as 5 km to the generating station through 300 to 1200 mm pipes.  It’s quite a sight and operation with a lot of steam venting from the wells and generally everywhere.  Some of the expansion loops were large enough to drive our KEA through.  The sign said that over the 5 km length the pipes can expand as much as 15 meters.  They are generating around 185 MW of power there.  The plant was the second in the world to be build.

 

From there we went into town and had lunch at a nice café and then Joan waited while I got a much needed haircut.

 

 

NZ2006 6June Tuesday Athenree

6June06  Tuesday

Today we started out from the Athenree campground and headed back up to Waipi to see the Martha goldmine there.  The goldmine started in the late 1800’s when gold was discovered there.  The mining was originally done with digging shafts down and then horizontally mining off the main shafts.  The growth of the mine continued and peaked around 1909 when there was 1600 miners employed there.  The mining tapered off over the years and it was considered no longer economically feasible in 1952 and the mine was closed. The mine had produced 5.6 million ounces of gold and 38.4 million ounces of silver. Over the years gold recovery from ore improved and in 1987 the mine was reopened as an open pit mine.  We were told that they are currently obtaining about 5 grams per ton of ore processed and that it was economical down to only 0.1 ounce of gold per ton.  Today we were told that the mine would only operate for 7 more days.  The reason is that the top of the pit can’t be made any larger in diameter to allow them to go deeper.

 

The mine currently employs 260 people and it produces more than $1 million worth of gold and silver per week.  The company says that $10 million is spent annually on wages and 80% of the total revenue stays in New Zealand.  It is estimated that it will take about 10 years to close the mine and do restoration work to the area.  The company currently operating the mine has received permission to do some shaft mining so who knows what the future may hold.  I haven’t looked at it but there is a web site at www.marthamine.co.nz.

 

After leaving Waipi we traveleddown the coast to Tauanga and from there headed over in the direction of Rotorua.  The area between Waipi and Tauanga is a large producer of kiwifruit.  We saw many orchards of kiwis along the highway and stopped to take a few pictures.  Most fields are small of just a few acres and made us curious as to how large most farms are.  We did see quite a few packing houses and cold storage facilities along the way.

 

In Rotorua we stopped in town and picked up some fried chicken and then took it to the city park and ate it there.  The pool has many bubbling pools of water and mud where eruptions have occurred and a lot of steam with hydrogen sulfide puffing up here and there.

 

We left Rotorua and drove the rest of the way to Lake Taupo and found the Top 10 Campground there.  It has the most beautiful facilities of any that we have had anywhere.  The bathrooms are very nice and have heated floors.  This represents the only heated bathrooms that we have encountered in New Zealand so far.  They also have a hot tub but we decided to save that for tomorrow.  It was getting pretty cold after the sun went down and didn’t feel like we wanted the cold wet trip back to the campervan after being in the pool.

 

NZ2006 5June Monday Waihi

5June06 Monday

Today is the Queen’s Birthday holiday and everyone has had a long holiday weekend.

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We drove from <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Coromandel Town down the east coast to just south of Waihi at Athenree Campervan Park.  We were going on towards Taurangi and find a campground there but it was getting dusk and rather than ending up driving after dark we decided to pull in to this campground.

 

As it turns out the campground has a large hot tub and Joan and I both enjoyed about an hour in the tub with about six or seven others.  One lady had a kiwiftuit farm and we had a nice discussion with her.  They like to have some cold weather just prior to picking the fruit to increase the sugar level in it but not extreme freezing cold.  She said that they had sprinklers installed in their groves to prevent frost damage.  Before the sprinklers they had to hire helicopters.  Some use motor driven propellers or fans to keep the air moving.  Sounds a lot like orange growing in Florida.  The kiwifruit grows on what looks like very bushy short trees staked in line almost like grape vines.

 

Parts of the road today was real “white-knuckler” with a lot of twists and turns.  Guess that you would have to say it was both vertically and straight line challenging.  Some turns forced you to about 20 kms/hr.  I think that Joan was feigning sleeping or at least her eyes were closed.

 

After we were settled in Joan was reading a brochure for the town of Waihi which is a few kms back and we had driven through.  It is the site of a very large gold mine which back in 1909 the production peaked with 1600 people employed there.  Production tapered off and eventually the mine closed in 1952.  Later it was sold and reopened and is still in operation today.  They apparently have tours so we intend to backtrack some and check it out tomorrow.

 

 

NZ2006 28May Manukau day 4

28May06 Friday

Today we worked in the rain from about 10AM on for the rest of the day.  We had hoped for a nice day like yesterday to get things dried out a little more.  We did work hard all day to get some of the detail work completed so that we can begin putting on the roof.  We put the insulation bats in the outside walls.  These are put between the studs on the outside of the walls since the tri-board forms the inside wall surface.  Then the Tyvek type of barrier was put on the outside of the house.

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One crew put the window sealant strips around the window openings to prepare for setting the windows.  After installing the insulation and the barrier wrap we worked on putting up the fascia.  The fascia goes on before the roof goes on as it is then easier to determine where to put the bottom edge of the roof metal.  We worked until after 5 to get all of the fascia completed.

 

A crew of the ladies worked on painting again today with Tisha and then with her to help with the installing the insulation. 

 

The electricians also worked most of the day finishing up the roughing in of the electrical wiring.

 

The tarp went back onto the roof early in the day.  Before that a crew worked on putting the clips on the ceiling panels to hold them up into positions against the bottom chord of the trusses.  In order to do this a hydraulic automobile floor jack used with a post from the bottom to lift the ceiling up while someone on top uses screws to install angle brackets to clip the ceiling to the bottom of the truss.

 

It was another long day of work mostly in the rain but we left feeling like we had accomplished a lot.  Tomorrow hopefully the rain will hold off and we can get the roof installed.  This is the goal of the week.

NZ2006 Thursday 26May Manukua Build Day 3

My days are a little mixed up with the photos.  These photos are from Saturday night BBQ, don' t ask me how I got them here. Part are from the build on Saturday and the homeowner family, Linda, Tau, Mark, and Eric.

Today, Thursday, we all ate out at the Buffet next to the campground.  I probably have that written diary on another day, who knows?

 

NZ2006 25May06 Manakau Day3

25May06 Thursday

Today we worked on putting up the roof trusses that were delivered in the morning.  Once those were up then all the purlins had to be installed.  These are the horizontal 3x3’s that support the metal roof.  Since this was a hip roof the roof system gets to be a little more complex than a gable roof.

 

Louie and Tutu the partner family homeowners worked with us today.  Tutu has been there most of the week painting with the women on the concrete house.  They are Mauri family and a pleasure to work with.  The cladding (siding) was also being painted today so that it was complete before installing it.  More rains came and the tarps had to go back up once again.

 

One of the terms learned here is smoko.  Not sure if that is how it’s supposed to be spelled but that’s what I came up with.  It means taking a break from work.

 

This evening we all went to the Happy Day Buffet right next door to the campground.  The campground and buffet driveways are adjacent to each other so the logistics were simple to get there.  This was a Habitat sponsored dinner and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

NZ2006 23May06 Build Day 1 Manakau

23May06 Tuesday

Today we arrived on site after a really nice BBQ at Ken’s house Monday evening all ready to go to work.  The local volunteers had put up the interior and exterior walls on Saturday.  Keith was the boss of the work and we were divided up into work crews.  Michael (1), Michael (2), Rob (1), Rob (2), Tisha and sometimes Michael (3) acted as crew chiefs.  Tisha was put in charge of the ladies doing painting and finish work in the block house next door.

 

One of the things that had to be done was to put up and cross-brace T supports in preparation to put the ceiling panels on top of the walls.  The T supports are placed so that they support the seams where the panels come together but are not supported by the walls.  The ceiling panels are ¾ of an inch thick and when you walk on top of them they would break through without support from below.

 

The ceiling panels were delivered after lunch by a truck with a long reach boom crane that placed the panels on top of the walls.  They are extremely heavy even though they are only about ¾ of an inch thick.  The ceiling panels are approximately 8 by 14 feet and are moved into position by a couple of people on top guiding them and about 4 or 5 guys below with 4x2’s (that’s what they call them here) pushing up and providing the motive force to move them.  This took most of the rest of the day.

 

It was good that there were two houses next to each other that we could work on.  The other house kept the ladies busy almost all week.  They really made a big contribution to the completion of that house.  The second house was also of an interesting construction.  It was basically on slab whereas the other house was of all wood and on stilts about 4 feet off the ground.  The block house wasof post-stressed concrete construction.  There were steel rods embedded in the concrete slab that were threaded on the top and then mortarless block are laid up to build the walls.  The rods are coupled with longer rods to extend to above the top plate on top of the wall.  After the walls are completed they are poured full of concrete and bolts are screwed on top of the rods and tightened to put the walls in compression hence the term post-stressed meaning after building stressing.  A university student studying for his PhD did the design and a local construction company supplied a lot of the materials.  It is thought that the design is earthquake proof.

 

Rain came late in the day and we had to tarp the top of the ceiling to prevent damage to the tri-board.

NZ2006 Rotorua 22May06 Sunday

21May06 Sunday

Today was spent in Rotorua doing some sightseeing.  We started out at the Agrodome for the sheep show.  It was similar to last year’s but we still enjoyed it.  The nineteen different breeds of sheep were put on display.  The emcee sheared a sheep on stage which is interesting.  It’s amazing how the sheep seems to be paralyzed when put in the sitting position for shearing.  We learned that the world record for shearing sheep was 720 in one shift.  The two types of sheep dog were demonstrated – the barking dog and the constant eye dog.  One herds by barking at the sheep and the other by silently staring them down.  One good sheep dog can handle about 2000 sheep.  We all got to pet the dogs after the show.  Paul Lupo’s favorite from last year was there again.

 

Fred from our team volunteered to milk the cow on stage this year and he did a very admirable job.

 

After the Agrodome we went across the street to the Zorb facility.  No one from the team volunteered for that experience.  The Zorb is a big round clear plastic ball about 15 feet in diameter.  They put you in it and then let you roll down a hill.  It’s an interesting concept to having fun.  Today they were only doing wet rides where they put warm water in the ball with you and you kind of float in it so that you’re not spinning around with the ball.

 

From the Zorb we drove down to the old part of town to see the 1880’s bath house.  It’s a beautiful old Victorian style structure that overlooks some lawn bowling greens and the botanical gardens.  The bath house was built as a place to come and enjoy a hot mineral bath or mud bath and had numerous small rooms for guests with various sunken tubs.  The building now houses an art exhibit and other historical exhibits.  One of the interesting baths featured an electrical therapy bath where you became one electrode and the water the other.  It doesn’t sound like a very pleasant experience.

 

From the bath house it was back to the campground and into the hot mineral baths.  We shared the tub with a New Zealand farming couple and had a nice chat with them.  Then it was a shower and get ready for the Tamaki Hangi feast and show.  Joan and I felt that they had improved both the facility and show since last year.  The bus driver wasn’t as humorous as last year’s but the he still had everyone singing and having a good time.  We set up Jim as our chief and he fit the role well.

 

We felt that the Mauri’s were very sincere in wanting to have us understand their culture and what they are all about.  If I understand correctly Mauri is now the official language of New Zealand.  The show was well done and the Hangi feast was excellent with lamb, beef, chicken, fish, kumara, potatoes, etc.  And of course for dessert pavlova and a number of other choices.  

 

It was a very good day.

 

NZ2006 Napier to Rotorua 20May06

20May06 Saturday

This afternoon we arrived in Rotorua from Napier.  The drive from Napier is very nice with the landscape changing to more rolling hills (mountains?) covered with sheep pastures in vibrant green.  It’s amazing how the sheep can cut the grass to look like a finely mown yard.  We even had some nice straight stretches of highway on the way.

 

Joan and I stopped at the McDonald’s in Taupo along the way.  They have a DC3 aircraft as part of their site and you can take your lunch to the passenger compartment and eat there.  Very unusual.  We may go back to Taupo during our extended stay after the end of the Habitat portion of our trip.  Lake Taupo is a world renowned trout fishing lake.  Last year a few of the guys went fishing there and caught a couple of nice trout that they shared with the rest of us that night in the campground.

 

Heading north out of Taupo you begin to see and smell the beginning of the natural sulphur springs, geysers, and hot pots.  The Crater of the Moon is an interesting stop that we passed by this year.  It’s a concentrated area of bubbling hot pots of grey mud and water.  Around the edges of these it is colorful with pinks, reds and some yellow deposits of chemicals in the water.  A little further on is a large geothermal generating station.  There are many large pipes carrying steam coming up from wells they have drilled.  Glen and Gwen stopped at a place where the operation was described and they found out that these wells are around 6,000 feet deep.  The steam comes up at high pressure and temperature.  The large pipes have huge expansion loops that Glen drove their KEA campervan through.  Apparently there are plans to expand the generating station in the near future.  The mild aroma of hydrogen sulfide permeates the air in a wide radius all around Rotorua.

 

After checking in at the campervan park a few of us loaded into our campervan and went downtown in search of a restaurant for supper.  The selection was large just in one block and we ended up at an English pub named the Plucking Pheasant.  They had a nice buffet and we ate well.  After that we headed back to the campervan park, donned our bathing suits and went to the hot mineral water pools.  The park has a selection of four from which to choose that are of varying temperatures.  After soaking in the pool for about an hour and enjoying a conversation with an Aussie couple we headed in for showers.

 

Coming out of the showers we ran into a guy from Hamilton which isn’t too far from Rotorua and it turned out that he and his wife do a lot of work for Habitat in Hamilton and she coordinates the Global Village short time teams coming from the States that come there.  The work of Habitat intertwines people from all over the world.  Apparently the Hamilton and Manakau affiliates are the two largest and most active affiliates in New Zealand and build the most houses per year here.

 

We called Warren Jack, the executive director of the Manakau affiliate today in-route and he said that they will be having us work primarily on one house that will be of wood construction and one of masonry construction next door to each other.  The wood house is a slab at the moment and we will be building the walls and doing the framing.  The type of construction sounded really different from what we do in the States and even different from the house we worked on in Dunedin.  Will find out more as we get into it.  The other house of masonry construction was designed by a PhD student at a university there and was described as a post-stressed construction.  It is ready for door jambs and some painting.  Will report more on that later.  We have a get-to-gather Monday evening at the home of one of the affiliate’s directors.  It should be an interesting kickoff to the build there.

NZ2006 Wellington to Napier

19May06 Friday

After staying in Lower Hutt last night the challenge was to find our way to Highway 2 north.  We headed back towards Wellington as the itinerary called for and found a sign for Hwy 2 but after a couple of blocks I didn’t believe it was the right direction (but it really was) and to make a long story short got really messed up.  We ended up on Hwy 1 somehow and decided to stick with that going northwest until we could get another highway headed back east to the Hutt valley and onto Hwy 2.  This gave us the opportunity to see a little more of scenic New Zealand than we planned on.

 

The first 40 kms or so out of Wellington north is a “white knuckler”.  And we thought those roads were over with!  The person in the passenger seat position gets a real view on this section.   Someone last year described the guardrails in this section as 2x2’s stuck in the ground with number 10 wire strung between them.  Joan really liked this stretch of highway (being facetious).

 

After about the first 50 kms or so the road straightened out and we even had some really long straight stretches.  As we got closer to Napier we started getting into the serious wine country and thousands of acres of vineyards.  Some of the names were recognizable.  Montana was one of the names that I remembered from the store shelves at home mainly because of the state of Montana.  The vineyards are well manicured and taken care of and are beautiful to just look at.  The rows are very straight and look like they were laid out with surveying instruments.  In between the rows they mow the grass and till the soil in line with the vines and it is just picture perfect.

 

A golf course on the way to Napier had an interesting array of mowing machines.  They had toput electric fences around the greens to keep the mowers off.  Check the photo.

 

We located the campervan park with no problems.  The directions worked well for that and we remembered some of the area from last year.  A few of us decided to look for dinner in town and we ended up down at the waterfront at the Acqua Seafood Restaurant that some of us had eaten at last year and the meal was excellent once again.  Some had the fish and chips and Carl had the swordfish.

 

Napier is a city that was destroyed by an earthquake in the era of Art Deco and the town was rebuild over a short period of time in that style.  They are maintaining the Art Deco style and even building some new buildings in that style.  The city administrators have found that it is a drawing card for visitors to come and see the city.

 

Back at the campground we found that the amenities and facilities were very nice and that they even supplied stacks of towels and washcloths for their guests in the restrooms.

We gave them a big thank you for that when we checked out the next morning.

 

 

NZ2006 To Wellington 18May06

18May06 Thursday

Today we had the crossing from the South Island to the North Island.  We were booked on the 1:15PM ferry and lined up about 12:30PM at the dock.  It was only about a 10 minute trip from town so it gave everyone a little time to look around Picton.  It’s a nice little port town and home of a lot of sailboats docked there.  As Joan and I were parked in the dock area a float plane came over our heads low and landed in the bay.  The ferry pulled out about on time and we were off to the North Island.  The sun was out with a blue sky and the seats on the sun deck were full.  Joan and I spent a little time out in the sun watching the wake from ship behind us and then went down to the café area where the team had congregated at the front windows.  We played cards, read and conversed for the 3 ½ hour trip.

 

We arrived about 5PM in the Wellington harbor and most of us immediately headed off to the Te Papa museum in Wellington.  The museum tells the history of the New Zealand peoples and takes a lot of time to see it all.  The museum is well done and is a beautiful piece of architecture.  The museum is built on 150 pilings and each one has an impressive rubber shock absorber between the building steel and the piling.  This is to isolate the building from earthquakes.  They record about 1500 earthquakes a year in New Zealand.  We spent about 3 hours there and then went to find the campground in Lower Hutt.

 

The campground had recently closed the end of street nearest the campground entrance and this caused a lot of confusion for us and others.  Eventually we all got in and parked for the night.

 

17May06 Wednesday

Today we drove from Greymouth up to Picton.  The highway started out with many switchbacks and sharp turns making the average speed very low.   The West Island shoreline is very beautiful and other worldly at the same with the sea mist from the breaking waves creating sort of a fog or mist along the shoreline and mountains behind it. 

 

One of the highlights was a stop at the Pancake Rocks.  It was an interesting stopping point.and the trails are very well maintained.  Because of the way that the rocks weather and wear away they have the appearance of being a stack of pancakes that have kind of slid sideways.  From the waves beating against the rock cliffs at the bottom there has been holes and tunnels created forming “blow-holes” that when the tide comes in it forces the sea water up and out spewing water and mist all over the place.

 

We eventually made it to Picton where tomorrow we will board the Inter-Islander ferry and move over to the North Island and Wellington.