Rain and Sunshine!

We tried something different yesterday and did our hydrating from the outside in, as the low clouds we started off in got thicker and thicker as we climbed up higher.  Then it got misty, then it started to rain lightly, then - well, you can probably guess what came next.  However, despite having a ski town as our destination, it did NOT snow.  And the rain was warm but after being in it for hours, we got cold, so finally needed some of those extra layers that we've been hauling around.  When we arrived at our ski chalet home for the night, everything was saturated - wringing out the cycling gloves, pouring out the shoes, and very happy to get into a hot shower and put on dry clothes.  That's when the sun peeked out, of course!  Right before we all called it a night, around 8:30, we finally got a glimpse of the beautiful mountains.

Today was one of my best-ever cycling days!  We had a nice long downhill from the mountains along a route called Mountains to Sea which follows the Whanganui River - this is an eleven out of ten ride!  Along the way, we passed through Jerusalem, London and Athens - we covered a lot of ground don't you think?  The lunch stop was at a little place where there were sheep penned up and working dogs organizing them - each dog has a particular job to do, some run the sheep away from the pen, others run them towards the pen, others were in the pen with the sheep - we looked for Momo but couldn't see him!  He would have fit right in.   There was a kunikuni pig there too - kind of like the potbellied pigs, people keep them for pets and they are quite friendly.  This pig was in one enclosure and our lunch guy fed him the squishy avocados...so she wanted more and burrowed under a fence to be in the little pasture beside us.  That wasn't good enough, so she burrowed under that fence and joined us for lunch!  Lots of good photos from that.

I WILL figure out photos and add some on....that's my next challenge!