The lonely stag

 

Once in a while we love to venture out on a mini road trip. 3 weeks ago we decided to drive south where we stopped at Whataroa to enjoy lunch and coffee. It's a very very small town and in 2013 the population was estimated to be around 288 people but I wouldn't think it's grown that much since then.

This cafe "The Lonely Stag" is where we got out of the car to stretch our legs. The cafe served beautiful food and they had a part bengal "cafe cat" that let us pat her. 

Speaking of travelling, we dropped my daughter R off at the Hokitika Aiport earlier this week as she is spending 2 weeks in Northland at a friend's wedding. She will be catching up with friends from school and visiting family up there. She also has high anxiety so I was really proud of her for organizing everything and flying up there by herself. 

I also bought 5 packets of Freesia bulbs to plant along the front fence so I'm thinking that by Spring we should have a lovely row of red and white flowers coming up.

Linking up with Skywatch Friday and Tom's Signs.

Time for a heat wave

Last year at this time we were exploring the far north of NZ. One place named "Long Beach" is about 10 minutes out of Russell and it was a scorching hot day.

This year we're facing a heatwave and the prospect of a drought - everything is so dry and it need of at least 2 days of rain. We have had to pre-order a water delivery for next week as sometimes there can be a 2 week wait. We were meant to have a large storm hit us yesterday but in the end all we got was 5 minutes of moisture and that was it.

Other than that we have made plans to visit the West Coast of the South Island in 2 weekends time to check it out and see what we think. We will fly down to Nelson and the other half's sister who lives down that way has kindly offered us the use of her car so we don't have to hire one.  And I started work last week, at the moment it's very part time like as in 2-3 days a week but it's better than nothing.

Winter in Awanui

We were up in Awanui yesterday driving through the Far North and stopped near a cafe. We haven't had alot of rain here where we are but it looks like they had had some. The river where these boats are moored was quite full and the ground very soggy with overgrown grass.

Back to work today, it's the start of another week...

Linking up with Our World Tuesday and My Corner of the World.

Karapiro Power Station

This is the Karapiro Power Station just out of Hamilton, the Waikato River has 8 other hydroelectric power stations - this one is the last of them. Construction started in 1940, the building certainly looks vintage, and was completed in 1947.

It's purpose is to maintain the flow of water in the lower part of the river during catchment and low electricity demand. To keep the river flow and a reasonable level only 2 turbines are needed - the third is used for peak generation and maintenance on one of the others. Mercury Energy operates all the hydro electric power stations on the Waikato River.

On this day we visited this place it had been raining on and off all morning, the stormy skies reflected in the background show how temperamental the weather has been.

Linking up with Skywatch Friday :-)