A bear wandered into the open garage while I was outside working on some wiring on the front porch. I would not have known he was there except that a woman stopped her car in front of the house a minute or so later to take pictures.
He found a little paper bag of trash that I was collecting while I was working – it had a food wrapper in it along with some wiring scrap. I had to shoo him off twice before he finally gave up and left for good.
Steve, Anne, Jennifer, Geof, Nacho, Adriana and Luno joined us in costume for a bit of gaming on Halloween, culminating in another twisted game of deception of Blood on the Clocktower moderated by Luno. I was fingered immediately as the demon after the first night by my first victim, Nacho, and hardly had a chance to try to talk my way out of being revealed and executed by the slayer (Anne) – but by pure luck I was saved by my minion, the poisoner (Jennifer), who just happened to choose Anne to poison the previous night. Anne’s slay ability thus failed, helping me appear innocent. For the rest of the game Jennifer and I managed to avoid detection, just barely, and ultimately win the game for evil. Darlene is still upset. 😋
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We replaced the old ice melt / heat trace cable on the back of the house this week – and extended it out over the three story drop:
Darlene and I joined her sister Shel and Diane, Regina, Rochelle, Lori, Brianna and Rachel on a trip to New Zealand this past month. Darlene and I had both visited New Zealand before but individually, before we met. Rachel, Darlene and I flew out to meet the others in the South Island, in Christchurch and Rachel got her first experience on electric scooters. From there we drove to Akaroa for a boat cruise looking for dolphins and other wildlife. We continued down the Otago coast hitting up the very cool Elephant Rocks near Oamaru and the Moeraki Boulders on our way to Dunedin. We stayed several nights in Dunedin, visiting sights like Tunnel Beach, Larnach Castle and Toitu Otago Settlers Museum. We also did a bit of hiking, saw the glowworms at Nicols Creek, visited the Royal Albatross Centre and got to spy on both the Yellow Eyed and little Blue penguins in the wild.
We continued on to Queenstown, where we enjoyed a steamship cruise to Walter Peak sheep farm for a BBQ dinner and sheep shearing demo. We took in the views via the gondola to Bob’s Peak and had a blast riding the wheeled toboggans down the Queenstown Luge. We visited an ice bar (and lots of shops) in town, I spent a day biking around Lake Wakatipu while everyone else went zip-lining in Glenorchy.
At this point, we split up with some of the group heading home and others continuing on to the west coast. Darlene and I stayed a couple more days in Queenstown doing some hiking before heading south to Te Anau. Some late winter weather closed the road to Milford Sound for a day or two but luckily the weather cleared up again and we were able to make a day trip from Te Anau with lots of stops to enjoy all the waterfalls and snow-covered mountain views both along the road as well as in Milford Sound on an afternoon boat cruise. The day was only marred by an attack of Kea birds damaging our rental car while we waited our turn to pass through the tunnel.
After Te Anau, we continued our road trip to the south coast and the Catlins region, stopping off at Gemstone Beach (we came away empty-handed) and lost the afternoon in Invercargill dealing with a damaged tire (unrelated to the Kea birds) and swapping out our car rental. As a result, we arrived after sunset at our somewhat remote accommodation (Mohua Park, lots of dirt roads to get there but oh so worth it) and we were still blown away by the gorgeous setting in the hills, surrounded by a sheep farm. As nice as the location was though, we spent our two days there out exploring and hiking along the Catlins coast.
From there we headed back north, all the way to Aoraki and Mt. Cook Village where we spent a couple of days enjoying fantastic hikes both below and partway up the surrounding mountains. We also managed to book a helicopter sightseeing tour when we saw the weather was likely going to clear – it was a spectacular flight on a gorgeous day, soaring among the peaks of the “Southern Alps” and landing on one of the glaciers.
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After a long drive back to Christchurch, we took an evening flight to reach Auckland on the North Island. From Auckland, we set out for the Hobbiton Movie Set near Matamata, stopping off at a surprisingly creative and captivating botanical garden, the Hamilton Gardens. The Hobbiton afternoon tour, dinner banquet and night walk was all really great and we were incredibly impressed by everything they’ve done and how well it’s maintained and presented.
We filled the following day with a couple of cave tours in Waitomo to see cool cave formations and more of the famous New Zealand “glow worms” as well as a visit to a bird sanctuary where we could see nocturnal kiwis among other native New Zealand birds, albeit in captivity. With our last day and a half in Auckland, we enjoyed the Weta Workshop tour, went up the Sky Tower, rode scooters out to Mount Eden for the city view, tried our hand at a couple of escape rooms and explored an amusing “sensory maze” experience. But then it was time to fly home again… until next time!
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Darlene and I went for a short backpacking trip into the southwest corner of Desolation Wilderness (near Lake Tahoe), camping a couple of nights at Twin Lakes. We had nice weather except for the heavy and unrelenting winds each night. We spent our layover day making our way cross-country over and up to a nearby peak. Darlene chose to take a nice nap at the saddle, while I finished the climb up to the top for some tremendous views.
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Darlene’s family (Alice, Kathy, Shel and Dan) came for a visit again this month and among other things, Rachel joined us for lunch at BeniHana’s, we visited the Santa Cruz boardwalk and we met up with Maryanne for some sightseeing down Monterey and Big Sur way.
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For my birthday this year, Darlene and I went to see this Star Wars-themed burlesque show that’s on tour, The Empire Strips Back: A Burlesque Parody. It was a lot of fun and their costuming and sets were amazing – very easy to recommend. We went in costume ourselves, of course:
Topping off our extended Europe trip, Darlene and I flew from Stockholm to Geneva to spend three weeks traipsing around Switzerland in June. In Geneva, we walked around and rented electric scooters over a couple of days. One day we took a train to walk around the medieval town of Annecy in France. After that we were off to the other side of Lake Geneva to visit Lausanne, Vevey and Montreux – checking out the Olympic Museum, the wonderful Chaplin World and the historic castle Château de Chillon.
Then we were off to stay a couple of nights in the tiny walled medieval town of Gruyéres – known of course for its cheese and fondue. We visited the castle museum there and the surprisingly extensive HR Eiger museum. We also enjoyed tours at the cheese factory La Maison du Gruyére and the chocolate factory Maison Cailler in Broc.
Continuing on, we spent a few hours in Bern after dropped off our rental car to continue by train to the main attraction for our trip, the Jungfrau region. We broke it up by spending four nights in Wengen, three nights in Grindelwald and two nights in Mürren. With so much to see and experience in the region and so many tremendous vistas in every direction, we could have happily spent many more days exploring the area and following the many hiking and biking trails – and perhaps we’ll come back someday to try out the many ski areas.
Besides gawking at all the incredible views every which way, some of the other highlights of the Jungfrau region were seeing the thunderous subterranean Trümmelbach Falls, ascending to Jungfraujoch and traversing across the top of the Aletsch Glacier, walking through the Grindelwald Glacier Gorge, hiking beneath the peaks of Eiger and Mönch, visiting Schilthorn peak and the Piz Gloria above Mürren and taking a side excursion into the St. Beatus-Höhlen cave system near Interloken.
After the Jungfrau region, we traveled to Zurich, stopping mid-day to see some sights in Lucerne. We had three nights in Zurich and wandered about a bit. We missed out on getting a tour through the Lindt Home of Chocolate (d’oh!) but our day excursion to go see the amazing Rheinfall (Rhine Falls) was so worth it.
There’s still lots more we haven’t seen of Switzerland and so I’d love to go back – and maybe in winter for some skiing in the Alps!
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