First Road Trip North

 

After getting use to driving for a couple weeks and making a bit of money working I put together my first roadtrip north. I wanted to go north up the center of the island and then west and down the coast in a loop. I was excited to get out and hit the road so I even got a paper map to take with me in Bumble Bee and mapped out the route and stops. All together it was a nice 180 mile trip. Pretty full on for a day trip as they would say over here :) 

 

 

It was a pleasant surprise just how pretty the route turned out to be. For some reason I thought that as I got to the north part of the island it would be flatter with sand dunes and lots of beaches. This was way way off. I ended up driving right between mountains all the way north. 

I absolutely love the arrow signs that they have here. They point in all different directions and tell you how far things are in which way. So much more interesting than out boring big green signs.

I thought this twin bridge was rather odd but pretty amazing. A LOT of their bridges here are one lane bridges that have signs as you approach telling which way has the right of way at the bridge. This was a two part one way bridge that had a side exit half way across. On the topic of signs I discovered something about myself on this trip... I am completely unable to drive past a brown arrow sign without following it. The brown arrows here are put out near popular interesting attractions. It was pretty neat because those same sites that were marked with the arrows are also marked on their road maps with red multipoint stars. This was one of the many that sucked me in. 

 

The site was a historic tree called the Mission Oak. This oak tree was pretty old and as I read this sign I had a feeling parking under it might not have been the best idea... This was the site of one of the first missions in the area.

Another little spot was the Waima Kauri Forest & Waterfall Walkway. It was a pretty little walk and had a nice waterfall at the end.

 



 



 

 

 

 

 

 

Part way though the trip I got what I felt was a good omen :) It was a rainbow so big and perfect I couldn't even fit the whole thing in the picture. It was a moment where I just really felt certain I was exactly where I was suppose to be in the world, pretty amazing feeling really.

 

It was a really great trip with some fun highlights that warranted their own posts... due to my snap happy photo taking. But to end the day I got some nice views of the sunset while driving down the west coast. 

 

 

 

 

Well it was a beautiful sunset and a lesson I keep learning again and again here. I will run out of daylight / time long before I run out of things to see.