Friday, March 5, 2010

North Island Day 7

This morning we went for a walk through the red wood forest. It was so beautiful.
The size of the trees is amazing.
The walkways were lovely and big and we saw many runners while we were here. How much better than being stuck on a treadmill.
Always a fun thing to do with such a huge tree. :-) Rachel was fascinated when Dad told her about the red wood trees in America where they have cut a tunnel through the tree and a car car ride through it. She said that would have been an ideal tree for the Swiss Family Robinson then - to build their tree house which was a house inside the trunk of a tree. And we read that story years ago.
For morning tea we took a detour off the Waitawa Walk and headed up on the Quarry Track where there was a picnic site marked.
The girls were pleased to see the snacks and water I had tucked into a small bag I had been carrying.
What a lovely day and what a lovely place to be.
The plants were huge. There were New Zealand Silver ferns, giant Mamaku ferns, Douglas fir, European Larch, Walnut and various species of Eucalypts. We are not very good at recognizing different plants but we did enjoy seeing the variation and the amazing size of them all.
Good time for a family photo.
The quarry was really beautiful. Quite overgrown though so it's not that easy to see the rock face on the photo.

On the way down from the quarry I got this video of the fun the younger girls were having with Dad pushing them in the double pram we had borrowed. Only when it was downhill would he run and they very quickly picked up when that was. ;-)
When we got back to the information centre I got a photo of the girls with this 96 year old Californian Redwood.
We walked at least 3,5km this morning and we all had such a lovely time.

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