A Day Around Queenstown

What do Tuscany, Swiss Alps, and Lake Tahoe have in common? The Queenstown area has images that remind me of all three. After spending the morning flying around on a scenic airplane fight we ended up at a vineyard for a picnic and wine tasting. I wish my sister Kimberly and brother in law Richard were here for this.

The camper van parked right outside the tasting room for a picnic. The winery had a cafe.

Lynn and I walked the grounds after the picnic.

The tasting room was a rare treat for us on a camper van family vacation.

The flight earlier in the day left Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu and headed for the high surrounding mountains called The Remarkables, over a few glaciers, and then on to the Tasman Sea.

The Wakatipu lake is the run off lake for the glaciers in the surrounding mountains. The above and below photos show the grey silty glacier water running into the lake.

The glaciers we saw are small ones compared with the massive more Northern glaciers of Fox and Franz Joseph.

Several high altitude "hanging valleys" with small collections of water can be seen near the tops in the alpines with waterfalls coming off them.

Being in the plane caused the usual "motion nap" for Anna. The pilot commented it was an expensive nap!

Phillip sporting his new wool hat with snow out the windows hardly looks like a summer vacation.



I love to sit up front.

The beach landing at Bay Beach on the Tasman Sea was a highlight.
There is absolutely nothing developed in this mountain into beach area.

The tide was high but here is our plane after the landing on the sand.

Here we are on the beach above contrasted with the snow we went through below to get there.

Many know I am a huge Tolkien fan. This is the area that the fellowship had to traverse to go around Isengard before deciding to brave the deep mines in the mountains.

Our first full day in Queenstown was too overcast to fly over to Milford Sound so we did a scenic flight of the Mountains and glaciers around Queenstown then on to the coast more north of Milford Sound. We flew with the private company that had flown the crew of The Lord of The Rings Trilogy. The pilot was great about pointing out the various places that were used for filming. After the flight we had a picnic at Amisfield winery. Then we went to Arrowtown for a river walk and play in the stream. We toured an old turn of the century chinese gold mining camp. Some of us were a bit grumpy and over the "fellowship of the camper". A little lull is inevitable in any long family trip. Since it was pouring down rain we skipped the evening church service we had been planning on attending and went to the campsite and to bed early. We felt refreshed this morning for another full day of scenic flying this time to Milford Sound. More on the Sound which is actually a Fiord later.