Taranaki Falls, also Mount Doom

Hello, Tom here.  Here is a very timely blog entry - today!  We spent our Saturday at the Tongariro National Park, the oldest national park in New Zealand and one we can see across the lake from our house.  Yes, this is the park with Mount Doom in it.

Funny fact - people here don't seem anywhere near as Lord of the Rings crazy as I'd thought they'd be.  For instance, most people seem to be about 20% as interested in the movies as I am.  When I refer to Ngauruhoe as Mount Doom, people look at me confused.  I find myself reminding them that Lord of the Rings was filmed on its slopes and then they say, "Oh, yeah!  That's right." Maybe 20% is a generous assessment.

The first photo to share with you is part of a series of glamour shots I am taking of our car.  I am hoping to be asked to direct a Corolla hatchback commercial in the future.  Here is our Corolla with Mount Doom in the background.

We drove about an hour down around to the southern edge of the lake to get to the national park.  We were actually standing on the shoulder of Ruapehu just behind a famous 1929 landmark hotel called The Chateau.  The walk out to the Taranaki Falls begins here.  This is a famous walk and a famous set of falls - nearly all the locals have done this walk several times.

Here is a better postcard photo of the nearby mountain taken from the car park.

After a short way through the brush, we entered a little bit of forest.  Here is Jasper, standing in the last bit of sunlight before the darkness of the wood.

The forested part was short lived.  We came back into the stream-crossed shrub land as can be seen behind a cute Jasper.

Here is a cool little bridge.  It looks bright and sunny, but, as you can see by our winter gear, it was pretty chilly on the mountain.  When we left our car, it was 8 degrees Celsius.  Unfortunately, there is no known way to translate between Celsius and Fahrenheit, but let me assure my American readers, it was pretty cold.

There were occasional benches for resting.  This was a pretty well-developed little trail.

We were walking through a lot of very old lava flows and the rocks were often stained bright colors:

A rare photo courtesy a German-speaking passer-by of all five of us: our immediate family plus Mount Doom:

Here is some awesome lava.  Maybe the lava flows are less old than I thought:

About an hour in, we came to a pretty big stream.  Here is the view upstream:

Looking downstream, you can see that the stream disappears between those two big outcroppings.  Stay tuned to see where the stream goes.

We decided this was a good place to sit and eat lunch.  Here are Evelyn and Jasper picking out a place to sit:

Walking down around the cliff face, we finally saw where the stream had gone - through a gap and over the cliff into a stunning waterfall.  That's Evelyn and Aidan at the base.

Here is the postcard photo of the cascade:

Mother and son and waterfall:

Jasper, as close as he dared get to the pool at the bottom of the cataract:

We continued on a path that ran along the edge of the river and featured very pretty scenery like this view:

Here is one last photo on our way back to the car of Ngauruhoe (or, as it is known everywhere but New Zealand, Mount Doom):

This was a beautiful hike and only took about 2 hours.  It was fun to be in the national park again and to see The Chateau.  My swing band, The Great Lake Big Band, is playing a gig there on November 30, so we peeked in to see what the ballroom looked like.  (I am the drummer, of course.)  I have a feeling we'll be doing this hike again - maybe with some American visitors!