Aorangi Mount Cook

Yesterday and today have been a real shock to the system.

The Snow Queen decided to let us know winter

 is just around the corner by sending snow, wind and hail. 

The temperatures dropped to 3 degs F yesterday afternoon.

I decided it was a good day to stay home

 in the warm and read a good book, so I did!

hail on the lawn

And this reminded me that I hadn't done a post
on our trip last August to Aorangi  Mount Cook.

Well that's not quite true, I have written about some of the trip here

and said I would write more but it must have slipped my mind.
Which is quite remiss of me seeing as the whole point
 of the trip was to go to the mountain.

So here is Part 2 of Day 2 :)
We left our motel in Fairlie early in the morning
and drove inland, heading for the Southern Alps.

high country farmland 

We stopped at Lake Tekapo and after a hot drink from the thermos

 we went into the little Church of the Good Shepherd

and after a time headed on our way again. 

 The freezing fog had burnt off by the time we reached

 Lake Pukaki and the Southern Alps were ranged out before us.

Lake Pukaki 

It was a beautiful day and we stopped here 

 on the way back for photo's. Stunning views.

You can see the size of the boulders on the lakeside,

 they were huge, that is my son near the lake.

We had to clamber over them to get good pics, 

or stand on top of one if you weren't up to the clambering.

And that was mission. But it was fun.

Now this is something I love, every time I see it.

You're driving along and come to a bend in the road. 

The scenery is already quite spectacular and 

you round this bend and there is the mountain - 

dead in front of you.

Aorangi Mount Cook aka Aoraki Mount Cook

The lady at our motels had said to us that 

Aorangi was 'performing beautifully this year'.

And it didn't disappoint.

Covered in snow from top to bottom

 I thought it was quite breathtaking.

We drove on and arrived in time for a bit of a walk around the village,

three intrepid explorers :)

before heading  into the hotel restaurant for

a welcome coffee and some lunch.

Our DIL wanted a meat pie, she loves our meat pies,

and couldn't understand why I wouldn't have one as well.

I prefer something lighter when all I'm doing is sitting and travelling.

number one son and his wife (Aorangi to the left)

After lunch we decided to take our drinks

 out onto the balcony  while we relaxed, 

chatted and enjoyed the view.

larger than life statue of Sir Edmund Hilary,
the first man to climb Mt Everest

After a very enjoyable afternoon at the village,

 and a little time in the gift shop, we won't mention what we spent,

we climbed back into the car and headed for our motel again.

If we had thought about it earlier we could have done a round trip

 as we were actually closer to our caravan in Cromwell 

than we were to the motel - but they were in opposite directions to one another. 

Oh well, up top for thinking so they say.

Eventually we arrived back at the motel, 

about 12 or maybe even 14 hours after we had left.

Anyway 'twas a long day by the end of day 2 of our road trip.

We had a wonderful day out, took number one son

 somewhere he had never been before 

so he and his lovely wife were able to discover it together. 

joining with:

Roses of Inspiration

Enjoy your week, 

keep well and 

I'll be with you again soon,

Diana