January 5th- 9th River Road to Wanganui
Sorry everyone for taking so long to put up this post! I've been traveling around and enjoying the company of other TA hikers instead of keeping up with the blog. Now I'm finally getting caught up and back on track. No worries :)
This section has a lot of road walking in it so I'm going to summarize it all instead of the boring you with the day by day details of walking River Road from the river.
After our overnight landscape job Joss, Rob, Gill, Peter, Cody and I left the town of Jerusalem and traveled all the way to London (only a few kilometers away) the British were very happy to be in London so soon. And Gill who was from Isreal enjoyed his stay in Jerusalem.
The road was extremely hot, and asphalt bubbled up; sticking to our trekking poles and shoes. We met an old man along the way dragging a dead goat, and carrying a rifle with a silencer from a top of hillside and down to the road.
He let me hold his dead goat which was quite heavy and still warm. The old man and his dog drove off with their prize which was going to be the dogs dinner; or so he claimed. We stopped for lunch in the shade to escape the heat and while later the old man came back and asked us if we liked oranges. Peter immediately blurted out yes which was good because half of us couldn't understand his accent. The man then drove off again and came back around a couple of times. It was all very confusing but in the end he produced a giant bag of oranges which was much needed; I had three oranges to myself.
The highlight of our trip would be Cody and Gill's experience of running into two elderly American nudist who gave them a free bag of strawberries that they shared with us all.
We got to spend the night in a sheep shearing barn that had running water and kitchen, right next to the nudist cabin- we had gotten permission from the owners of the barn. Thankfully there were no more elderly nudy sightings after Cody's first run in.
Back in the barn we discovered that they had recently sheared sheep and had several barrels of wool in the shed.
Sheep have a very pungent oily smell to them which permeated my gear.
All six of us slept well that evening; in the morning we talked with the owners of the barn; mostly about the benefits of roundup for weed control. Kiwi's seem to be pretty evenly divided on the use of poisons to control their weeds and pests.
We continued on walking along river road and came across another sheep shearing shack; this one was actively shearing sheep.
The whole process was very quick, the shearer would be given a sheep, and in less than 5 minutes he would have him shaved and pushed down the hatch to join the other naked, bleeting, victims.
While climbing up the road and out of the valley we had some amazing views from the top of the mountain looking down at the Whanganui river.
We were quite happy to be walking along the road rather than paddling the last stretch down to Wanganui.
The last bit of highway walking was unpleasant as highways always are. But at the end of it all there was a little cafe, and the six of us enjoyed a nice lunch before we went our separate ways.
Cody and I got a hitch into town and checked into a Holiday Park. This one had some unusual additions .....the blob was by far my favorite part.
Sorry everyone for taking so long to put up this post! I've been traveling around and enjoying the company of other TA hikers instead of keeping up with the blog. Now I'm finally getting caught up and back on track. No worries :)
This section has a lot of road walking in it so I'm going to summarize it all instead of the boring you with the day by day details of walking River Road from the river.
After our overnight landscape job Joss, Rob, Gill, Peter, Cody and I left the town of Jerusalem and traveled all the way to London (only a few kilometers away) the British were very happy to be in London so soon. And Gill who was from Isreal enjoyed his stay in Jerusalem.
The road was extremely hot, and asphalt bubbled up; sticking to our trekking poles and shoes. We met an old man along the way dragging a dead goat, and carrying a rifle with a silencer from a top of hillside and down to the road.
He let me hold his dead goat which was quite heavy and still warm. The old man and his dog drove off with their prize which was going to be the dogs dinner; or so he claimed. We stopped for lunch in the shade to escape the heat and while later the old man came back and asked us if we liked oranges. Peter immediately blurted out yes which was good because half of us couldn't understand his accent. The man then drove off again and came back around a couple of times. It was all very confusing but in the end he produced a giant bag of oranges which was much needed; I had three oranges to myself.
The highlight of our trip would be Cody and Gill's experience of running into two elderly American nudist who gave them a free bag of strawberries that they shared with us all.
We got to spend the night in a sheep shearing barn that had running water and kitchen, right next to the nudist cabin- we had gotten permission from the owners of the barn. Thankfully there were no more elderly nudy sightings after Cody's first run in.
Back in the barn we discovered that they had recently sheared sheep and had several barrels of wool in the shed.
No kitchen is complete without an arrow through the wall
Sheep have a very pungent oily smell to them which permeated my gear.
All six of us slept well that evening; in the morning we talked with the owners of the barn; mostly about the benefits of roundup for weed control. Kiwi's seem to be pretty evenly divided on the use of poisons to control their weeds and pests.
We continued on walking along river road and came across another sheep shearing shack; this one was actively shearing sheep.
The whole process was very quick, the shearer would be given a sheep, and in less than 5 minutes he would have him shaved and pushed down the hatch to join the other naked, bleeting, victims.
While climbing up the road and out of the valley we had some amazing views from the top of the mountain looking down at the Whanganui river.
We were quite happy to be walking along the road rather than paddling the last stretch down to Wanganui.
The last bit of highway walking was unpleasant as highways always are. But at the end of it all there was a little cafe, and the six of us enjoyed a nice lunch before we went our separate ways.
Cody and I got a hitch into town and checked into a Holiday Park. This one had some unusual additions .....the blob was by far my favorite part.
Glad y'all are having such a great experience! I was starting to wonder if you had fallen into the water between North and South! Cody, Joe said you need to do Survivor next!
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