Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Yes, I know, Photo Friday is happening on Saturday this week. I've been very busy writing that new novel! This will probably be the last of the reports from New Zealand, freeing me to start in on the travels we've done in the US since returning! As we made our way up the North Island to meet our flight home from Aukland, we were able to explore one of the most striking New Zealand landscapes: Tongariro National Park. Picking just enough photos for a blog post was very, very hard. New Zealand's oldest National Park, Tongariro is also a World Heritage site preserving Maori culture. We would look into some of that later. For our time in the park, we merely tried to be sensitive about hiking around a mountain sacred to the Maori people (Ngauruhoe). The Tongariro Northern Circuit, most of which we hiked, starts out between Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe, and circles the latter. Part of the hike, along the northern side of Ngauruhoe, is also part of the insanely popular Tongariro Crossing...

Still working my way through the photos from our time in New Zealand! Back in late February, we did a trip from Christchurch down the east coast of South Island all the way to Invercargill, then up to Te Anau, the launching point for our Milford Track tramp. I've picked a few highlights from the trip south, into an area that gets a lot less attention than many parts of the island. We weren't sure what we'd find, but we found more than enough to fill our 4 days Oamaru: Steampunk HQ This trip included not only our 21-y.o. son, but a friend of his as well (I'll call him Friend B). It was in part with the boys in mind that we planned a visit to Steampunk Headquarters. We didn't regret it. At the entrance. Kind of a Mad Max feel.  Out back there were a lot of interesting machines welded together from stray parts and a lot of imagination. Definitely a Mad Max feel.  One of the fun things was the Metagalactic pipe organ, which played sounds picked up from around the univer...

It's been a while since I got out a photo post, but I haven't forgotten that I've a bunch of trips and sights still to share! I also realize I still haven't shared a couple of other trips we did before this one, including the Milford Track, but since I've started here, I'll do this and get back to the others. Our visit to Abel Tasman National Park on the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand (got all that? :D) was a special one. We broke from our standard hiking pattern, as well as from the huts, and rented kayaks and reserved spaces in the beach-front camping grounds. The three-night, four-day trip involved two days of kayaking, then two days hiking back. Abel Tasman is probably the most heavily visited of New Zealand's national parks, with as many as 5-7000 people on the water, beaches, and trails on a peak-season day. I could see why (and was glad that we were a bit off the peak). On the drive north from Christchurch, we spent 5 or 10 minutes wa...