Coasting Along: New Zealand Day Two

Today was one of our four driving days we are driving north along the west side of the South Island, our plan was to get up early and be on the road by seven this morning.  We did not do too bad as we were on the road driving by 7:40, we had six hours of driving ahead of us so we were glad to get this early start to our day, not so easy since no one in our family is a morning person.

Well long story short, our six hour drive took us TEN hours!  Read on and you will SEE why.

We just could not help ourselves, we had to stop, look, soak in, and enjoy, this country is just too beautiful to go zipping by at 120 KM/ HR. 

Spring is in full swing, we saw so many sheep with their little lambs, I think there are more sheep than people in New Zealand, the trees are budding out and the rivers are running fast.

We found a beautiful pull off

and then another and then another and then...... "ok we need to drive or we will never get to the hotel."  We just said how we need to drive and from the back seat  came these words "stop, we need to stop here!"

So we stopped, after all we are on vacation.  This place turned out to be a great stop as we were blessed with some wild life, in the wild

The seals were out sunning, the birds were flying the wind was whispping by and we were loving every minute of it.

We spent about 30 minutes here exploring and soaking in God's beautiful creation. 

The amazing feat is that we did drive for about an hour and a half  after our seal exploring stop,but then we were getting hungry.  We are trying not to eat out too much on this trip so we went to a grocery store last night in Christ Church to get some picnic food and snacks for our car. 

New Zealand has there roads set up very nicely for travelers, there are little signs with a picnic table on them indicating an area with picnic tables along the coast, they are about every five miles or so. 

This is where we stopped to eat

The birds were happy we saved them some bread crumbs.

and once again we were blessed with seals sunning themselves

this one was big and lazy and let us get very, very close it

It was a great day for some fun and some time of reflection and family bonding, and alone time.