Graduation Day!

We did it!  We finally did it!  We graduated from medical and pharmacy school!
The graduation ceremonies were a lot to sit through, but our families were such champs and went to all of them!  Our niece Reagan and nephew Matthew were amazing (and their dad)!
We were both pretty excited and proud of each other for each winning an award in our areas of practice at our colleges' ceremonies, Daniel in Pediatrics (best student in peds which is awesome because he is med peds!!!) and Lindsey in Clinical Pharmacy.  We had a wonderful party hosted by our parents with lots of friends and family coming to celebrate.  We could not believe how many people came, and it was really special!  Thanks for ALL of the support!
Love,
Drs. Wells :)
(you'll never see a blog signed that way again)

We've Moved!

Daniel and I bought our first home and we LOVE it!  It is a cute little 1940's house on the edge between Midtown and East Memphis.  It has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths - come visit us and you don't have to share a bathroom with us anymore!

Five things I love the most about this house:
One - The kitchen is updated and full of storage.
Two - I don't have to go into a terrifying, filthy basement to do laundry
Three - The landscaping, especially the beautiful backyard seating area (thank you previous owner who ran a landscaping business, seriously, thank you.)
Four - Water pressure hooray!!!
Five - It doesn't have a basement from my nightmares.

I already miss our old neighborhood, Evergreen, with two parks within walking distance, but Parker is definitely benefiting from the proximity of Chickasaw Gardens neighborhood and their pond.  I also miss my four minute commute, but fifteen isn't so bad!  Worth it!

North Island

After a wonder two days in Blenheim celebrating our anniversary, it was time to take Daniel to see some of the North Island.  We started the day off with our B&B's homemade muesli and 18+ different homemade jams from fruits grown in their own front yard.  We made the quick drive to Picton to hop on the ferry that would take us to Wellington, the city where I had started this trip over a month ago!  The ferry trip was beautiful going through the Charlotte Sound.  It was a gorgeous sunny day and I saw tons of wildlife from the outside deck.  I also got to watch a little bit of the Ellen Show from the inside deck! Luxury! Yes! The ferry was late arriving in Picton which was the first of many schedule changes that occurred on the North Island.  We had several things we had wanted to do and see in Wellington, but we didn't arrive in the city until mid afternoon.  We decided not to rush it and booked a room in Wellington for one night as soon as we got to town.  Our first stop in Wellington was the Weta Caves, which is really not a cave at all, and it had nothing to do with nature at all.  I was there with Daniel for 45 minutes and I still don't really understand what Weta Caves really is.  This is all that I know... I believe it is a company partially owned by Peter Jackson that makes film props, costumes, and figurines.  They had pieces from the LOTR movies and then other movies with magical creatures, monsters, etc.  We didn't go on the tour, but Daniel got some of his LOTR fill here.    Then we drove to Mount Victoria, the same lookout that Whitney and I had done when we first arrived in NZ.  It was still a beautiful day and you could see a lot of the city and the harbor.  I also took Daniel to the Botanic Gardens and we walked all through it until it got to be too dark.  The next morning we woke up to another beautiful day (a little bit to our dismay - I'll explain later) in Wellington.  We took a short run together along the bay and got ready to see a few more sites before we left town.  We had a long walk to the Parliament building (aka the Beehive) and stopped by the National Archives to see the Treaty of Waitangi.  This was a really, really old document that gave the Maori people many rights to their land and other things, but both the document and its promises were neglected for a very long time.  Nevertheless, many of those rights are honored today, and it was a very important treaty in NZ's history.  Next we went to my favorite museum in NZ, Te Papa.  I enjoyed it so much the first time, I had to take Daniel back there.  Unfortunately, we did not have enough time there because we had to get on the road because we only had four days to do the entire North Island.
The beautiful weather tripped up our plans a bit because we had wanted to do the Tongariro Crossing that day (a part of the Tongariro Circuit that Whitney and I had hiked) to get a better view from the top than I had gotten the first time, and to let Daniel see Mordor/Mount Doom.  Part of our decision to stay in Wellington was because the weather forecast for both Wellington and Tongariro looked pretty crummy.  I was not about to push my way to that Tongariro Crossing summit only to see clouds again and get rained on at very cold temperatures.  (Read my post on the old blog about clinging to rocks for dear life, winds forcing me to the ground, and losing my pack's rain cover. Remember that? I do all too well)  So we decided to stay in Wellington instead of driving at night to stay somewhere halfway between Wellington and Tongariro.  On our trip between Wellington and Rotorua we passed by the Tongariro Crossing and Mount Ngauruhoe and of course it was beautiful and sunny.  Daniel was satisfied to at least see Mount Doom, but I was sad to not be able to do the crossing, to miss the (well deserved) views, and for Daniel to miss the moonlike volcano landscape.  Oh well!  You can't do it all, and we had a good morning in Wellington.

We drove to Rotorua as a good stopping point in the middle of the North Island.  We passed through Taupo and stopped to take some pictures of Lake Taupo at sunset.  Driving between Taupo and Rotorua at dusk was amazing because you could really visualize how geothermically active this area is.  Everywhere you looked you could see steam spouts near the highway and off in the distance.  They were pillars of what looked like smoke, but we knew they were hot pools all around us.  It was pretty cool- not something you see every day!  We arrived in Rotorua and noticed they were having an open market one block from our hostel.  Once we got settled we went to check it out!  We didn't find much, but we didn't have any plans that night so it was cool to just see it all.

We decided in Rotorua to drive through Matamata on our way up the North Island.  Matamata is a little farming town made famous by the filming of the Shire scenes in LOTR. Daniel took the full 3 hour tour of the Shire, and loved it, of course!  He got some great pictures and really cool stories!  I hung around in town in the meantime just walking, shopping, reading, and eating cake with coffee!

Our flight was leaving late Thursday night from Auckland, but I didn't think that there was much for us to do in Auckland so I made plans for us to stay in the Coromandel Peninsula until Thursday morning.  Initially I had thought we would just stay there one night, but then with all the driving throughout the trip, we had another change of plans.  We found a different place to stay for two nights leading up to flying home.  We ended up finding a place to stay that was much, much better than the place I had originally picked.  This was a guest house/B&B.  It was one of our favorite little places!  We had our own little apartment with a private bathroom, patio area, and kitchenette.  It also had just enough space for us to spread out and get repacked (oh the dreaded process!) to go across the Pacific.  The nice lady who owned it let us do our laundry for free (amazing) and by that I mean she pretty much did all of our laundry for us (even better).  There is not much to do in the fall in the Coromandel Peninsula besides hike, see the Cathedral Cave, and visit the hot beaches.  It was raining off and on so we didn't hike, but we did manage to see the Cathedral Cave (and forgot the camera! sorry!) and gave the Hot Beaches our best effort.  The hot beaches is an area where you can dig yourself a hole in the sand, and it gets filled up with hot water like a natural hot tub.  You can only access it around low tide.  When we were there low tide was about 7:45pm.  We got out there two hours early to get our little hole ready.  The sun was still out when we arrived.  We were definitely not the first ones there, and there were a whole lot of people coming as it got closer to low tide.  It got darker and colder, and the waves were not settling down one bit.  The tide was not going down hardly at all, and there was a very small patch of beach where we could feel the warmth.  This spot was good to stick your feet in, but the cold waves would come up to your knees and take away all your body warmth!  Daniel, along with many other go getters (or people who just like digging holes), gave it his best effort to find a warm spot.  On this night, it was just not happening.  It was dark outside and not a single person had found a warm spot that wouldn't get swept away by the waves every 30 seconds.  We gave up.  The hot beaches were not hot that night, but apparently a week prior the hot water was reaching 20+ meters higher on the beaches -safe from the waves!  We were somewhat disappointed, but too cold to care in our wet bathing suits! At least we had one more almost full day in NZ!

We left Whitianga in the morning and drove to Auckland.  I drove Daniel through some of the major parts of the city, but we didn't do much.  We ended up at Mission Bay, the quiet, peaceful part of Auckland, where Whitney and I had escaped all the cars and rush last time.  We got some coffee and enjoyed some reading, then had a delicious meal and ice cream for dessert.  Finally, it was time to take our rental car in and get to the airport.  It was really bittersweet ending the trip.  I had an amazing time!  With the cold weather approaching in NZ, though, I felt like we had done so much for that time of the year.  We didn't get to snow ski or enjoy the summertime water sports, but that's for another trip!  We were also pretty excited to come home and move into our new house!

Goodbye, New Zealand! Until next time!

Wine Country

As you may or may not know, Lindsey and I celebrated our 4th anniversary in New Zealand. May 9th is our actual anniversary date, but since our plans dictated that we be travelling on May 9th in our preparation for Abel Tasman, we delayed our anniversary until May 14th this year. So to celebrate, Lindsey and I went to Blenheim, the wine capital of New Zealand, and had ourselves an awesome anniversary.

Basically the South Island has two wine regions- Central Otago and Malborough in the northeast corner of the South Island. We went to the latter. Bleheim is a fairly small town right in the heart of it and draws a lot of visitors for the sake of wine touring. We stayed at a very acclaimed Bed and Breakfast called the Olde Mill House for two nights. First I'll give a blurb about the hosts - they were AWESOME. This place has been a B&B for 10 years now, and they've got it down. It's a fantastic old home owned by a super nice couple. Our room had it's own bathroom (which is a huge deal for us on this trip, since none of the hostels do), a patio right outside of our room, a hot tub!, and a breakfast to die for. The breakfast was homeade muesli (a NZ type of granola cerealish thing), toast, fresh fruits, and a plethora of homeade and home grown jams to choose from. They have all kinds of fruit trees at their house and they make everything fresh. We ate fruit to our heart's content in the mornings and soaked in the hot tub with a bottle of wine at night. Couldn't ask for a better place!

The morning of the 14th, we got up, ate our breakfast, and decided to get a little exercise before we started on the win tour. The Olde Mill House has lots of bikes to rent (free if you're staying with them!), including some tandem bikes, so we decided to hop on one of those and go for a ride through the vineyards. It was a crisp,very sunny morning on the country vineyard roads.  In Lindsey's words:"This is paradise." It was so beautiful and fun and we were really pumped we got the chance to do that! We got back to the house, changed, and then it was time for our big anniversary plans: the full day wine tour of Malborough! Our guide Colleen picked us up and we joined 4 other people for the tour. It was such a cool experience. We started off getting some "bubbles" at the No. 1 Family Estate owned business who used to make champagne in France and then proceeded to tour 5 other wineries and a local chocolate shop. Each place had 4-6 wines to taste, each with whites and reds. We tried Chardonnays, Sauvignon Blancs, Pinot Grigios, Rieslings, Pinot Noirs, a Merlot, dessert wine and surely some other things I'm forgetting. Such a fun experience and such a fun day. We of course got ourselves a few bottles of our favorites to bring back home.  Several of the wineries have cafes which serve lunch, and we stopped at one with beautiful views from the outdoor seating area and had a scrumptious meal with our our group.  It was a really fun group, and we enjoyed their company a lot. Our last stop was the local chocolate factory where we got a few tastings as well.

Wineries Visited: 

No.1 Family Eastate

Hunter's

Framingham

Wairau River

Rock Ferry

St. Clair Family Estate

After the day was over, we went to a local place to grab some dinner and found our way back home! It was everything we could have asked for and more for an anniversary, and will definitely go down as the best single day in New Zealand.

Tandem Bike Riding through the vineyards. Not as hard as it looks, even when the backseat rider chooses to casually ride and not peddle...

Hunter's Vineyard

Framingham Vineyard

Saint Clair Vineyard

Happy Anniversary!

Kaikoura

We drove to Kaikoura after the Abel Tasman for one purpose... to see whales!  This is a town with nothing going on besides fishing and whale watching, and we couldn't leave NZ without seeing a whale.  This is a very well organized company who takes you by boat to see the whales, typically sperm whales.  There is a really cool explanation with cool images of why Kaikoura is such a whale haven, but I cannot do it justice.  Basically it has a really, really deep canyon not very far from the mainland which makes deep sea water fish available for the whales.  Apparently it is uncommon for deep water like this to be near the continental shelf.  Awesome.  The sperm whale that the company had tracked was really far off shore so it took us over 30 minutes to get to a point where they could listen for him underwater.  Once they listened, we took off in its direction and found him right away!  Lucky for us he had just come up from a deep dive, and we got to see him for about 7 minutes before he went on and did his next dive.  I even got the tail shot as we went to dive back into the canyon for abother hour or so.  Because these whales can dive for 45 minutes to almost 2 hours, they can be difficult to catch on the surface.  After the awesome dive we tried to find another sperm whale but were unsuccessful.  That was slightly disappointing, and we had to start heading back to dock because we had traveled so far from the coast.  BUT as we were getting really close to the dock, someone spotted something really rare for this time of year... a humpback whale, and not one but TWO!  Humpbacks do not usually come until July, but there were two adolescent males making the journey earlier than usual.  They were playing around dangerously with some of the fishing lines.  One actually came quite far out of the water and did kind of a splash dive for us.  At the time I was pulling out my camera and only caught a glimpse of this, but we did get to see both whales a couple times.  We were really excited to see humpbacks, and the sperm whale with it's neat tail dive would have been enough!

Sperm whale blowing through his blowhole

Getting really close to the sperm whale

Going for a deep dive

Hope you get some really good fish on your dive!

This doesn't do justice to the humpbacks, but there is one and the other's splash to the right.

Abel Tasman

After a few nights of rest, it was time to start the Abel Tasman Great Walk. If you remember from a previous post, we had already done one of NZ's Great Walks during our trip (the Milford Track). Each of the Great Walks is a different experience, and this one was chosen by Lindsey when she was trip planning because it afforded us an opportunity to do a Great Walk and see something completely different than we had seen on Milford. Milford was a structured 4 day hike through a glacial valley and over a mountain (Fiordland) in which each person (40 of us) had to hike the same distance to the same hut each day. There was no tent camping allowed, and you couldn't veer off and do your own thing. It needed to be booked well in advance because of how full it gets. The Abel Tasman is very different. It's a very loose hike that can be done in 1-5 days.  The tramp is basically along the beach on the north end of the South Island. There are hills, but it's mostly considered an easier hike, and there are both huts and campsites at many stops along the way which you can book based upon the pace you decide you want to go. It's flexibility and capacity allowed for us to make our decision about how we wanted to do the hike much closer to the actual start date.

Daniel and I opted to do the Abel Tasman in 3 days and 2 nights.  The weather forecast predicted possible rain on the morning of day 1 and sunshine thereafter - perfect!  The Abel Tasman is interesting in that on one of the days of the hike, you can only cross the trail during low tide. Otherwise, you would just have to swim across a bay (not safe, nobody does this especially with a pack)! The low tide schedule also worked well on our chosen days with low tide at 3:30pm on day 1 and 4pm on day 2.  It worked well with my plan to do all the tidal crossings in one day in order to avoid having to wait for low tide all morning and part of the afternoon of day 2 or 3.  If you get stuck between the two mandatory tidal crossings, you might have to wait most of the next day in order to go to your next stop which is possibly just an hour hike away.  We did not want to wait 24 hours just to hike for an hour.  I felt that we could see more if the tides didn't require us to stay in a certain place for a long time.  I also had hoped to take the water taxi to our start point and be able to walk back to the finish and get in our car on our own time.  I did not want us being rushed to get to a certain pick up point on the trail at a certain time for the water taxi to bring us back to our car at the end of the trip.  The weather and tide timing worked wonderfully with this plan.  

Day 1 

We drove to Marahau and hopped on the water taxi with about 8 other people. These other passengers were day hikers who didn't have enormous packs to lug onto our boat.  We definitely stuck out among them.  They had on their blue jeans and sneakers while we were decked out in our hiking gear.  First we visited by boat the Broken Rock, one of the famous landmarks (or seamarks?) in the Abel Tasman National Park.  It was just a round granite rock in the sea that split in two a long time ago, but it was a mandatory photo opportunity.  Then, we went north along the shores of the park dropping off day hikers here and there until it was just the boat driver and us.  At one point he started turning inland and weaved through some major rock formations to get to a place called Shag Point which he said was only accessible at a "bloody high tide."  He navigated us to this little spot with seals hanging around and said, "Alright let's see your seal charming skills."  We looked at him really confused until he pointed to some baby seal pups that were jumping in the water towards us. This was one of the best moments of the trip! We got on the back of the boat and gently swirled our hands in the water and the seals slowly swam over and started playing. Both of us even got to pet them when they swam up and rolled over to present their bellies! It was so cool and something completely unexpected.

We left that area and were dropped off at Totoranui, but we still had about an hour or so to kill, so we made a little loop north of the track we were about to do, had a picnic lunch, and then took off, backpacks full and loaded. The plan worked beautifully as we arrived at the first tidal crossing right at the point when we'd be able to cross. You always get a little wet going through the Awaroa Estuary, but that is all part of the fun.  Daniel and I both brought sandals for this part, but Daniel's broke not even halfway through the crossing, but we just laughed and he was barefoot through the sand, mud, and water which probably also made it more fun!  He probably finds it more fun now than at the time.  The track led us through some very beautiful woods and then back onto the beach several times.  We also made it to the next tidal crossing just at the right time.  I tried to keep my feet dry on this one without taking my boots off... and failed.  I wound up with a thorn or two or seven in my feet, and one didn't come out until the next morning!  No worries though!  We made it to our campsite with enough daylight to pitch the tent and start dinner.  We stayed at the Onetehuti campsite just steps from the beautiful Onetehuti Bay which had a very nice beach.  This campsite is big enough for 100 people, but we only saw about 2 or 3.  We had our little section all to ourselves.

Day 2

We woke up to a beautiful morning at Onetehuti.  We slept a little late (until 7:30) and took our time getting all packed up to go.  This was our longest day, but it was still only a 5 hour hike ahead of us.  We spent a while getting the tent dry since we were going to need it again on this trip and hit the trail around 10am which is a super late start for us.  This day was gorgeous all day long, and we got some amazing views!  One thing that I found very different about this hike is that you actually see some tiny towns of New Zealand holiday homes (called baches).  There are a few roads that connect through the park and occasionally some power lines.  In comparison, on some of the other hikes, running water is not even thought of.  Sometimes we felt so far from civilization and then  we would feel that we were almost in it.  Of course, these holiday homes were deserted because of the timing, but seeing them was really different from the Milford. On day 2 we passed another tidal crossing, but our timing wasn't excellent so we took the optional high tide track that took an extra hour.  This led us to Cleopatra's Pools which is a natural pool created by a large stream.  Had it been just a little bit warmer we would have been taking a refreshing swim.  The water looked incredibly tempting, but (seeing that it is their equivalent of our November) even on a warm sunny day at the northern end of the South Island, it could be pretty chilly in the shade and at night.  At the advise of some lady who works at the Motueke info center, we stayed at a place called Watering Cove.  It is a little campsite big enough for only 10 people, but we had it all to ourselves.  It had spots for only a few tents, one rudimentary toilet, and a faucet that spurted water which had to be boiled before being consumed.  From the beach we had a nice view of an island, and the stars at night were unbelievable.  The Milky Way was right above us and the southern cross just in front of us.  The longer we stared the more beautiful they glowed. 

Day 3

This was our very last day of backpacking and we had motivation to get up and get going because most importantly... our lunches were in the car.  This was an anticipated 3.5 hour day, but it only took us 2.5 hours.  It was another day of fabulous weather!  We were so lucky this whole time!  We saw a number of other awesome views, but as a whole, not quite as good as the first two days.  We just had fun cruising along this very easy track and were excited that we had accomplished another New Zealand Great Walk - our first one tent camping the whole way!  

After completing the tramp we walked (yes, another 20 minutes with our packs on) to the car and found a nice  picnic table in Marahau with views of the bay.  It was an awesome trip to end our backpacking in NZ.

The Broken Rock

Totaranui: returning from our little loop track north of this campsite- Just ahead of me is the beach where the water taxi dropped us off.  At this moment I was amazed that this place even has gravel roads.

Picnic by the Totaranui beach - a great way to stall starting the hike so that we hit the tidal crossings just right!

Arawoa Estuary - first tidal crossing 

Good Morning at Onetehuti Bay! Daniel is sipping his morning tea on the beach.

Onetehuti to Anchorage view

Our tent site at Onetehuti

Finished!

Punakaiki and Motueka

We drove from Copland Track to Punakaiki, a small town on the West Coast. There isn't much to do in Punakaiki besides see the famous Pancake Rocks, but it was a good stopping point for us between the Copland Track and our next hike, the Abel Tasman. We were really glad we stayed here because we loved the little lodge that we stayed in. The place was really quaint and cozy with a very well equipped kitchen, and we met some nice people there. We made a feast of soup, homemade pizzas (our favorite post hike meal), salad, and brownies for dessert! The next morning was our anniversary, although not officially celebrating for another 4 days, so I made us a big breakfast the next morning. I definitely took advantage of a nice kitchen where I didn't have to share it with 15 other people trying to cook at the same time! This lodge also makes homemade warm wheat bread and muffins every morning. Yum! We took our time lingering here in the morning because we didn't have too far of a drive or much of an agenda besides getting to Motueka and booking our Abel Tasman hike.

We made the 4 hour drive to Motueka easily and went directly to the information center to make our hiking trip arrangements. We wanted to book our trip no more than one day in advance to be sure about the weather because it could have easily changed our plans. Thankfully, the forecast was perfect, and we were able to book tent camping sites rather than stay in the huts. Daniel and I love the huts, but on Abel Tasman, the huts were not in ideal locations for where we wanted to go each day and in what direction. You can either take a boat to your starting point and hike back to your car, or hike from where you leave your car and then get picked up by boat at the end. Your choice depends on preference and the tidal pattern of the day. Yes, Abel Tasman requires you to pass through places only accessible during low tide. Low tide times change daily so it took careful planning for how far we wanted to hike each day and what times we crossed the tidal sections. After we made our final plans, we went to our hostel. Here we had a nice meal. We cooked lamb for the first time! Then, we packed our backpacks in preparation for our last backpacking trip in NZ!

Pancake Rocks

Westland, New Zealand at Sunset