Mastodawn

May 11

Some of the birds, again mostly from Cascade Saddle, including takahē, kea, korimako/bellbird, and tūī. #BirdsNZ #birds

May 11

People and a cat. #tramping

May 11

Oops, I broke the thread. Let's try again.

Here's some pictures from the Eastern Townships of Quebec in December 2026. Quebec is significantly less flat than Ontario, but that's not saying much. The St. Lawrence Valley, in particular, is pretty flat; when I used to drive to Boston, the mountains would noticeably get (a bit) higher across the border in New Hampshire. #Quebec

Skipping back to the Cascade Saddle trip: we flew from Wellington to Christchurch and then drove to Wānaka; it was much cheaper than flying to Queenstown. We went rock climbing in Wānaka and Queenstown along the way.

Here are four more pictures from travel to Wānaka: Unwin Lodge is just outside of Mount Cook Village and a convenient place to stay; also nearby is a bunch of salmon farms; and Arrowtown is a small village a bit out of Queenstown where we managed to find a place to stay in our tent.

I have processed all of my Cascade Saddle pictures, although I did the last set on May 1, so that'll be part of the June thread. Maybe I'll also finish some other mountain pictures for that thread. The archives are endless.

Some mountain pictures from the Cascade Saddle day. #SouthernAlps

Less-snowy pictures from the Cascade Saddle day. #SouthernAlps

On the next day, we walked from Dart Hut to Shelter Rock Hut, where the takahē hang out. #BirdsNZ

The first/last day on the Rees Track has 16km but is pretty easy terrain, if you don't get bogged down in the bogs. We avoided the bogs.

But not the last picture of mountains. On the way out we passed by Aoraki again, again on a clear day.

Gotta run to the airport to follow up with some delayed baggage issue, but will just wrap up with two posts here. Again over the Cook Strait, but on a totally different trip to Blenheim (towards the Travers-Sabine), on a quite windy day.