...so off we went to the tiny town of Arthur's Pass. How tiny is it? Well, to give you a basic idea, here's the post office. Looks like a bus shelter, doesn't it? You'd be waiting a long time for the bus though....unless you were in a tourist bus! Ok, so back at the task at hand. LUNCH! Becky and I went a neat place called the Wobbly Kea. The restaurant is named after those rascally, feisty, smarty-pants alpine parrots. We were starving, so we got a veggie pizza to share. While we were waiting for our food, I was able to capture some more Kea antics, as you can see in the clip below. They were gnawing at the gal's bicycle seat as well as the rubber seals around windows of her car. Silly birds! After a lovely lunch, we headed out for more adventures. We were fueled up and ready to go! Next stop, Devils Punchbowl Falls. It's not a long hike to get near the falls, but there were
certainly a lot of steps you have to go up and down to get there. This pic only shows one of the many flights! Once we made our way to the small viewing platform at the end of the trail, it was really crowded. As a result, we didn't hang out long. We headed back down the trail for some better vantage points. 
Honestly, the falls were gorgeous no matter where we could see them from!So after that hike and clambering up and down alllll those stairs, well, we were hungry again (what else is new, right?). Hmmmm...ice cream sure would hit the spot! Ta da!
Those who know me know which one of these cones is mine. Tee hee hee! ;-) Watch out Kea birds, this is MY ice cream and I'll fight ya!
After loading up on junk food, it was time to head out of town. Our next destination was the town of Ashburton and we had a ways to go to get there. As we continued down Arthur's Pass, the scenery continued to fascinate us. Becky took tons of pictures of all the fab mountains. Me? I took a quirky pic....like the one below.
I fell in love with many of the signs in NZ. This one I love because it reminded us of a Lego car. It made us laugh every time we saw it! In fact, I will probably round out my NZ blog with a few more pics of signs and other interesting things sighted that didn't make it on my other posts. More on that stuff, later. One of the next places we stopped at was Cavestream Scenic Reserve, which you can see in the clip below.
As you heard, we did not go spelunking this time. After all our activities of the day, we were pooped! Onward we went. As we got closer and closer to our destination, the roads got flatter and straighter. In fact, the last highway into town was super flat and super straight and frankly, boring as hell. Were we ever going to get there?
Finally, we arrived. We stopped at a grocery store to pick up some things, including some much needed wine. :-) Next stop? Ashburton Holiday Park. It took a little while to find it, but find it we did. The allure? Hot showers! We hadn't showered for two days and after all our hiking and running around we did, well....we felt grody to the max. Once at the campground, we were pleasantly surprised at how pretty it was!
There was a pond surrounded by lovely old trees, mostly eucalyptus that were HUGE. The pond had a gaggle of geese and a paddling of ducks (yes, that is one of the correct collective nouns for a bunch of ducks on water!). We basically had the whole non-powered part of the campground to ourselves! Bonus!!! We parked and attended to the first order of operations. SHOWERS!!!!!! We both took nice long showers to de-crud ourselves. AHHH. We felt like normal people again! That was probably the second best shower of my life. The next order of operations? Dinner! We planned on a simple meal of wine, apples, cheese, crackers and NZ avocado, all at a lovely picnic table by the lake. Yes, I realize the below is a 2 minute movie clip, but it basically describes the scene to a T, with bonus footage of Becky's super-cool socks that she is knitting and a Subaru WRX STi sighting. Yeahhh, the car nerd in me took over. :-)
Soooo, soon after this movie was taken, the CRAZIEST thing happened. Sorry in advance for the nastyness of the next clip, but well, it explains it all....
Is that not INSANE?!?!? A HUGE bird of some sort was in the tree above us and he POOPED on us and then flew away! Fortunately, the wine bottle took the brunt of the hit. Even better? The wine kinda sucked, so we didn't mind so much that it was a casualty from poop shrapnel - lol! After cleaning up, we walked around the park to explore it. There was a playground and we, being the "kids" that we are, played on it! We played on the swings and the see-saw and I even went down the slide. Well, I sort of went down the slide. It seems that the slide was built only for narrow-hipped kiddies, not for wide-load Wendys. As a result, I went down the slide very, very, very slowly, with me saying a rather extended, "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" as I inched my way down. Becky and I were totally cracking up! I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard!!! Good, good stuff. :-D
For the final course of our amazing day, we were rewarded with a most awesome sunset. Once the sun went down, we headed for bed. To say we were exhausted was an understatement! Tomorrow, we were going the Ashford Spinning Wheel Museum and craft store and give ourselves one last shot at finding some good NZ wool yarn. With all the sheep around, you would think it would be easy! NOT!
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