Lord of the Rings: Edoras

Just before Natasha left Matt took her to Mount Sunday aka Edoras.  It is about a 40minute drive and then a little walk/hike.  Nothing major.

This is where a fair bit of filming was done for Lord of the Rings (don't ask me which one, I have no idea) and many Ashburton kids got jobs as extras.

The pix are cool...

Here are some movie stills of this spot...

a good weekend...

Hello all.

This was a pretty good weekend down under.

Highlights were the All Blacks game and skiing (in June - too funny)

But Friday night we decided to be adventurous and cooked supper (pork chops and potatoes) in the wood stove.

Jamie when we told him what we were doing...

During the day, Saturday was pretty quiet, Matt and I did get in a run along the trail by the Ashburton river.  11+km,  finally getting back into shape.

Adrian, Matt and Luke went to Christchurch on Saturday night to take in the All Blacks vs Ireland Rugby game.  Joelle, Jamie and I stayed home and watched movies and ate popcorn.

They had an unexpected surprise as there was a streaker at half time.  Matt said it took security a little while to catch her as they were big and imposing but could not run as fast as her.

He got some pix of the game but not the streaker...

and he got a video of the Haka, the traditional Maori war chant/dance done before each game, 

I am sure there are better ones on You tube but this is ours.  ( but I don't think the upload worked I will try to fix this later sigh... check youtube  , it is pretty cool)

Today we went up to Mt Hutt to ski.  Mt Hutt is about a 40 minute drive from our house.  The worse part is the mountain road that is 14km long with a max speed of 40km/h.  You drive most of it at 20-30kph.  It is nasty with cliffs that just keep going and going and going.

Now before you head up this road, chains are required.  Snow tires do not exist in this part of New Zealand (or any part that I know of) and on mountain roads everyone uses chains.  At Mt Hutt they have a chain hire  if you do not have your own and they put them on for you too. 

Unfortunately the main parking lot was full when we got close to the top so we had to park downhill a ways and get shuttle bussed to the top.  This took an hour...

and then we got to go skiing.  It was quite windy, the lift rides were miserable but the skiing was good.  Jamie had a rough run the 1st time down but then it all came back to him.  Luke decided to snowboard and Joelle skied as well.   Matt and Adrian did the snowboard thing and I was lucky enough to see Adrian doing some tricks while I was on the lift (some jump and 360 mumbo jumbo thing).

I skied and had rentals.  Man, after owning your own gear rentals are miserable.  Next time, performance rentals. Much better...

unhappy Jamie, the wind was very cold on the lift.

and the best part of skiing...

Hot Chocolate (and cappucino for the mumma!)

Joelle in her new ski gear, we did not bring her stuff as it was just about too small, early morning trip to The Warehouse (local dept store) took care of that lack of clothing. 

Adrian and the love of his life, his new snowboard.

In the parking lot the Kea's were taking over one of the snow plows.  Seems funny to see a type of parrot on a ski hill...

and that was about it...

Hope everyone had a good weekend too. 

Cheers!!

Matt's Hunting trip

Recently Matt and his buddy Greg went hunting at Pudding Hill (great name eh?)
They took a helicopter!  And no, they did not shoot a dear from the chopper, it was just a drop off and pick up as the brush was thick in a big way and they only had 3 days to play.

I'm going to post Matt's pix and hopefully he will get inspired to add some commentary later.