Catch up

Wow, I feel like I need to write something profound and incredibly insightful. I've been on braindead autopilot for the past month or so, not having much motivation to write or take pictures or a lot of other things. Why? I dunno...maybe the suspended heavy metal particulates in the air held down at my lung level by constant temperature inversions has finally done the trick...I'm slowly becoming retarded. Or maybe I was stressed about other things. Toss up I think.

We went to New Zealand for a friend's wedding outside of Wellington. The trip, and the wedding were great. I even managed to work in a days worth of fly-fishing on the day of the wedding with an old man who felt bad for me. This pity was great. We flew into Wellington on Day 1, spent 2-3 days in the Levin-Wellington area, and then headed for the South Island. We underestimated the size of the island however, and spent more time driving then we had initially planned on. I should have expected this, coming from Colorado where a town could be within spitting distance but the drive thru the various mountain passes takes hours. On the South Island we made our way along its North Shore and to the wild West coast and its amazing scenery. Spending a couple days making our way down we also took a heli-hike up Fox Glacier before heading down to the island's extreme southwest corner and its amazing Fiordland National Park. We did a two day kayaking trip thru the impressive fiords which Elizabeth decided she would never do again while pregnant, and she claims I'm lucky to still be alive for convincing her to do it. After the kayaking we made our way back up to Queenstown for some wine tasting (well I did) and some bungee jumping (again, I did... pregnancy limits one's ability to drink and jump off high ledges...may be an evolutionary survival trick, who can tell?). So thats the extreme short hand version of our 1st and surely not last New Zealand experience. It was fantastic and I would highly recommend it to anyone and their Grandmothers. It was just that good.

I'll write more soon, as its been an interesting couple of weeks.

Jesse