Local weekend fun

Hi, it's Evelyn. We are nearing the end of our time in New Zealand. We leave for the States in just under four months, and things are starting to wind down a bit. After the busy visits to the South Island during the summer, we have been enjoying the quiet time just the four of us. However, we still want to spend as much time in this beautiful landscape as possible, and so this particular weekend in early April, we headed back to Tongariro National Park and walked a track called the Silica Rapids track. Our area has suffered a bit of a drought lately and so, although we've walked this track before, lots of it looked very different than the last time we visited. I love being so close to a national park that we can visit our favorite places more than once and see the different sides and moods of a single place.

Two happy boys on the trail

Aidan in the bush. An Aidan in the hand...

Here are the berries that Jasper collected, after first asking me about the likelihood of these berries being poisonous. 

Waiting at the trailhead for daddy to return after dropping the car off at the end of the trail.

Treasures

Aidan's on the catwalk to nowhere

A great shot of our volcanoes. Spending time here makes me wonder why we aren't spending every weekend here...

I generally encourage the boys when they point to a rock in the distance and decide they want to climb to the top and look around. These boulders are here because of an old lava flow.

Lava can make oddly shaped rocks

Yes, and I try to DIScourage this type of behavior, but as every mother knows, it's hard to stop a boy when he wants to walk around with his shirt over his face.

You guessed it! Lava flow -- but this used to have water flowing through it the last time we were here.

And here they are - the silica rapids :)

So many colors in one landscape!

Some of my favorite moments are when I catch these two very seriously discussing whatever the topic of the moment in little boy land happens to be.

...so much to discuss

After our walk, we stopped at a beautiful place for lunch right on the edge of Lake Taupo. It was still perfect weather and we all enjoyed the restful scenery.

Here are my three boys at our table, huddled together to stay out of that strong New Zealand sun.

The next day we stayed in town and visited the hot pools. Both boys have been here with school but we have never gone together as a family. We were so excited to receive a gift certificate for a family visit from Kevin and Karen for Xmas this year. The mineral pools are green and quite warm. There are also standard chlorinated pools with a big waterslide where the kids can swim and don't have to be afraid of catching a thermal parasite every time they put their heads underwater.

Note the green water - we generally stayed in the hot pools - because they were so nice....

All the landscaping is sort of fake but still pretty