It's been a month since we updated...oops! Hasn't been to eventful in the past month. Not much to report. We've had a few bad weather days that kept the mountain closed with bad wind and no vis. Then we both got colds and are still trying to get better. Ashley did the video report for the mountain website on Friday morning. You can find it at www.mtruapehu.com Bottom right of the home page there's a "video and pics" box to click on. It's a quick snippit, but it was fun. Thursday night we had our lift operations mid season "jug night" which had a "punter" theme. Punters are basically the people you see up here in retro gear and/or inappropriate clothing. Such as jeans shorts and flip flops in the snow. You'd be surprised to see how many people come up to sight see in warm weather clothes and even high heals!! 90% of these peopel are asian and don't speak english and it's just so funny to try and get them on and off chair lifts!!
We're still hoping for some September snow storms here because we've had a lot of rain on the mountian lately and are already dealing with slushy, spring skiing conditions. We need some snow to keep the mountain open until mid October so we can finish out the work season!
We've finally booked our flight to Australia in November. We're going to spend a month in NZ after the season ends (OCt 11-Nov6). 3 weeks touring the South Island then a week back up in the north near Auckland and the Bay of Plenty and the coastal beaches. It will be so nice to get back to the sun, sand and ocean!! In Australia our plan is to fly to Cairns (upper north) and start our trip with a week's dive trip on the Great Barrier Reef. Then we'll make our way by bus down the east coast to Sydney. We have some friends here that are either from Australia or have spent a lot of time there so they're helping us plan our trip. Should be a great experience and a lot of fun. We'll make sure to work on our tans so that we show up at Christmas nice and gloden.
We haven't yet heard anything final with our plans back in the States but we're still thinking Charlston, SC is where we'll end up. Hopefully we'll spend 2-3 weeks roadtripping from CA and stopping for a few ski breaks along the way! Christmas and New Years in Tahoe this year again finally!!! Then off through Utah to visit some friends working in Park City, then across Colorado and through the middle of the US ending up in FL to see family, pick up our stuff from storage and move. Hopefully that'll put us settled down by February.
:-) Hopefully it won't be too hard to settle down after all these adventures!!
