Drive to the West Coast

We left Blenheim and wine country for the rugged West coast today.  We started in the valley and followed a river along into the hills, seeing higher peaks in the distance.

We saw more areas of forest that were clear cut, and other sections that had been re-planted.  I dont' think this was related to disease.  The forest looked too regular to be old growth.  They were clearly planted for eventual harvest, and harvesting is done through clear cutting in this area.

A new road adventure was the increasing number of one lane wide bridges, some of which we had the right of way for, and others that we had to yield to oncoming traffic.  I think in all of the 20+ bridges we crossed, we only had to actually stop for oncoming traffic once, so this method seemed to work ok.

We played "hey cow" as we passed a lot of herds of cattle.  Then we started seeing sheep by the side of the road in pastures, so I decided to play "hey sheep".  Let's just say they were a lot less docile than the cows - they all ran for it when I yelled at them.  I actually felt a little bad for scaring them...

Scott and I had a good laugh over all of the 'slippery when wet' signs along the road.  First the road was slippery for the next 300 m, then for the next 2 km, then for the next 3 km.

Finally the signs got more accurate with just 'slippery when wet' (at all times).  Since there was nothing unique about the road in some places over others, this made so much more sense!

After our cave tour, we continued our drive down the coast to Kumara.  The roads were narrow and very curvy.  We caught some beautiful glimpses of the coast, but the sea was often hidden from view of the road by a thick growth of trees.