Hikes and waterfalls 13-14 April

Rainbows on our way to a hike near westport!

Walking sticks are quite popular with the girls.

This is the lower part of the Denniston Bridle track-we had been on part of the track higher up the mountain, so this portion was faster to drive to (and much less switchbacks in the car!)

Frankie really liked this drapey pine.

Violet on the trail!

I love the fan tails! So far, this is the best picture I've gotten of the actual fan. They are too fast!!

Pretty little fern.

The girls we practicing careful steps with some of these steep parts!

And we went across a few areas of old slips (landslides), which were very interesting to see.

Hi cute family!

Lu showing where we were!

We made some pizza at home, and Van thought that croutons on pizza was an obvious choice. Of course!

The next day we cruised up to Murchison (to the east through the mountains) to see big trees and a cool waterfall.

More mushrooms!

And fun climbing logs!

So many mushrooms!!

Maruia Falls!

Much better view from down by the rocks, but the sand flies were so bad, I swear they were going to lift Van away.

Frank is probably my most agreeable subject for photos lately. Such a good sport.

A sacred kingfisher! Josh, bless his heart, is generally game for the 'wait! turn around! I think there was an owl in that tree!' type of requests. NZ has this super cute compact little owl called a ruru that you can sometimes see roosting on trees during the day, but not this day. But the kingfisher is super cool!