Back to Queenstown

Emily, Angela, and I eventually made our way back to Queenstown, through more rain.  We stopped in Wanaka for a break and some Patagonia hot chocolate (and churros, croissants, ice cream, chocolate bars, fruit/yogurt, and a truffle.... we needed to eat our frustration with the weather)

Then we went over to Basecamp, a rock-climbing gym, to kill a couple hours. The place was packed, but we squeezed in and had a pretty good time climbing around on the walls.

We were all REALLY good, I can assure you : )

We also stopped in Cromwell, home of the giant fruit statue.

Next day, Erin Fisk arrived!!!

So we gathered her from the airport and took off on some adventures in the Queenstown surrounding areas.

We started with a drive along Lake Wakatipu, and SUN was back!

Erin couldn't quite understand why we were all so incredibly happy about the sunshine.

We found some fun trees to climb on over the lake:

I'd like to call special attention to Emily in this photo.

Feeling solar-charged and ready for more activity, we headed down the road, but we didn't make it very far before this happened:

Yep, sheep traffic jam......

I thought it would be really funny if that hay truck was empty by the time it got through the herd of sheep : )

'scuse us.

It was pretty epic.

Once we made it through the traffic jam, we made our way to Glenorchy, where we went on a trail walk through the wetlands at the top of Lake Wakatipu:

There was a lot of sunshine, which we were pretty happy about, as Emily is demonstrating:

There were also black swans!

From Glenorchy, we made our way to Paradise, NZ:

Aptly named

And after all of our adventures, we settled in for a nice BIG dinner in Queenstown!

Those ribs were incredible. I ate everything on that plate.

And that was another successful day in New Zealand. When the weather's good, things are REALLY good. When the weather's bad, things are still pretty good overall.