My name is Charlotte, sometimes known as Ms Lottie, occasionally as The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady. This is my blog, where you'll find me writing a lot about my quilting and textile arts and a little about my family's life in a small seaside town in New Zealand. Haere mai!

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Three weeks later...

I haven't updated this blog for three weeks or so.  It's been school holidays and that's always a busy time.  And this holiday we decided to take the kids camping - yes in the middle of winter!


After a hurried departure to make the most of the weather, we drove down to Lake Waikaremoana, spending one night at the Hamilton cousins on the way. 

Lake Waikaremoana is on about the same latitude as Lake Taupo but further towards the East Coast.  It's in the middle of Te Urewera National Park and to get to it you have to drive on about 90 km's of dirt road.  Now I live on a dirt road so they don't scare me, but the road to L. Waikaremoana is pretty bad!

We finally arrived and settled in for one night at the camping ground, in a cozy cabin.  The kids were very excited to wake up the next morning to snow on the hills and a doozy of a frost - the first real frost either of them had seen.



That's snow on them thar hills.
The weather forecast looked great for the next few days so we loaded up the boat and set off to find ourselves a camping spot.  Lake Waikaremoana has a very popular tramping track circumnavigating it and so has big, well appointed Department of Conservation huts around it.  But you have to pay quite a bit to stay in them and we wanted to give the kids are real tenting adventure so we decided to find our own spot.

You can see the glassy stillness of the lake.
The lake was absolutely flat and we motored through 'the narrows' (a skinny bit of the lake that cuts up rough when it's windy) without so much as a ripple.  We found a perfect camping spot on our first attempt and within a couple of hours we were relaxing in front of a roaring fire.


My Hubby sets up a large tarp as a 'roof' then we light the fire at one end and set up the tent at the other.  It gives a large area that you can live in and spread our your gear without fear of getting wet if it rains. 

We spent two nights here and we were snug and warm at night (if a little uncomfy - not used to hard ground!) and the kids had buckets of fun. 

And I think that's enough writing for today!

To be continued......
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5 comments:

  1. Hopes HandcraftsAugust 3, 2011 at 4:29 PM

    Youre a brave woman going camping in the middle of winter, Charlotte!! I see you have a child that is being "patched" ...brings back memories of daughter #1 when she was a similiar age and was having her stribismus (sp??) corrected.

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  2. CadiAugust 3, 2011 at 4:53 PM

    Winter camping. Awesome.

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  3. CadiAugust 3, 2011 at 4:59 PM

    P.S. I love your daughter's camping skirt. :-)

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  4. Cabbage Tree FarmAugust 3, 2011 at 9:04 PM

    It's beautiful down there isn't it. I remember the slightly scary road though!
    I like the idea of the tarp roof for your campsite.

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  5. Cat J BAugust 3, 2011 at 9:53 PM

    Ahh, too cool! Do you remember camping one winter with just us kids and Dad? Brrr! Love Miss O's camping duds too.

    ReplyDelete

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