You Fill up my Senses, Like A Night in the Forest...

Wednesday 9 April

Super cold night - happy to have the heat pump at our disposal when we woke with cold noses!

I decided it was definitely time for a wardrobe swap so pulled 95% of my winter gear out from under the bed along with a bunch of Louis’ sweaters etc. Decided a few summer items were surplus to requirements full stop and put them in a bag to go back to Auckland, but most made the cut for next summer and went back under the bed.

Packed up and said a fond farewell to Old Bones Lodge - we’ll definitely be back! Not far down the road into town I was delighted to see a small herd of Red Devon cattle which brought back childhood memories of holidays on Dartmoor with paddocks of these beautiful cows and bulls all around us - their colour is stunning, their shape very pleasing and I recall the Dartmoor ones around Sherrill & Babeny being very curious and friendly.

As we travelled we could see increasing signs of autumn all around us, from the golden & red leaves on the deciduous trees (and the roadside verges) to the smattering of snow on the higher peaks inland to our left as we headed north. Our journey took us up the coast through Oamaru & Timaru, with a quick detour to Wainono Lagoon for lunch, before we branched off inland via Geraldine, heading for Peel Forest 🌳

Louis had found a cool DOC camp at Peel Forest and we have a DOC pass so it was like a free campsite for us. Because of the amount of rain they had had recently the number of sites was severely restricted and there were no powered sites, but we decided one night on solar power was not much of a risk (having a few issues topping up our power supplies for off grid adventures at present).

Arrived to find half the site looking like a paddy field as it had rained so much - but we had a lovely dry spot at the end of the campground in the sunshine, so settled in without unhitching and brewed a lovely cup of tea. The Facilities Block at this DOC camp was pretty impressive with a good working kitchen, laundry, showers and flushing toilets. When we got there the rather drab beige brown facilities building was undergoing a makeover with a youngish Japanese artist spray painting and rollering a beautiful nature/hiking/birdlife mural along the front and both ends of the block. He had finished one panel with a pair of hands holding an old map and a gorgeous greeny bellbird... I can't wait to come back and see the finished mural one day!

Took a walk through the bush and a sheep paddock along the Kahikatea Walkway. The bush was very verdant, obviously the rains that have been lacking in the MacKenzie Lakes district this past year or two has all been falling here instead. The birdlife was pretty cool, but one feature which really struck us was the amount of trees with parasitic ferns, peeling bark, twisted trunks and great big malformed, bulbous, fungal nodules

After chatting with the Kaitiaki, DOC guardian, we took a stroll down to the Rangitata River before being beaten back by the midges! in the portrait picture below you can see a swarm of little black dots buzzing around in front of the moon!

Cooked dinner in the warm & busy camp kitchen, but ate our burgers back in Banjo as there wasn;t a spare seat available in the kitchen, and settled in with diesel heater on and extra duvet on the bed to watch more of Black Snow. As soon as the sun went down the temperature plummeted again! ❄️ Selfie below was me dressed up against the cold to wander over to the toilet block!!!