Not your normal Mother's Day

For Mother's Day this year I asked to tramp with the boys. Not a request I would ever have done in the past. I never thought walking / hiking / tramping would ever be something I could do or enjoy again. It is hard to explain. I am exhausted at the end and often feel totally overdone. But in a "not fit" great way. Rather than in a medical emergency way that was occurring.

The rest breaks on the way there looked good.

We walked into Anti Crow Hut. Which is the weirdest name ever!! But there is an Anti Crow stream right near it.

I was shattered by the time I got there. A lot due to the mental thought of having to do it all in reverse and being time pressured with the short winter day. 

The hut in the background

When we were half an hour short of the hut Aaron and Eli raced ahead to boil the billy and give us some hot food. We worked out the break could only be half an hour, this was a great idea as we got hot good food, which gave me some fuel for the return and made me feel amazingly more positive. I am learning a different tramping. As before I could just keep going. Now I have to have breaks, food, rest. So I need to adjust to new expectations.

Not a great photo but the return rest breaks were quite funny. Hard to get up from and thrilled to collapse when we finally took a stop.

Loved loved loved it.

19 year remembrance tramp

19 years ago (almost to the week) my husband and I met on a Tramping track in NZ. Into Lake Daniels on the Lewis Pass.

 

Now we have two kids in tow, we are older, tireder, but also re-energised with new life happening again. Nope - not babies - but a new heart means the life we had then, we can start having again. Out and about in nature, tramping into overnight huts and enjoying the great outdoors.

 What was new 19 years ago is new again, almost as fresh. Almost even more exciting. Back then we had no idea what was to come but now we know what we have to look forward to as we create a new way of living with the new lease of life I have been given.

Bed ends, now a chair.

Aaron and Jakob headed into Mt Cook National Park and up to Mueller Hut. Eli and I stayed behind and got some stuff done. This chair I made from a bed end and bed head. I finally gotten around to finishing the sanding and giving it a polyurethane coat to finish. Yay

It had originally looked like this when I made it.

Eli had his friend over to stay and I could not get down the hallway without being blasted by Nerf guns pellets. They had so much fun with their barricade and it left me to finish the seat, sew and do my assignment.

 

Up to Mt Ollivier

The Warfedale Tramp

Last weekend Aaron and Jakob decided to do the Warfedale Tramp. So in the morning to limber up and relax they jumped in the hot tub. Then Eli and I decided to make waffles so they even had breakfast in the tub!! 

The Track has had a massive upgrade, thanks due to the Mountain Bike club. It is one of the few areas where mountain bikers can go for weekends. See the bikes to the left of the hut. Because of this you do need to take a tent just in case as the hut only sleeps 8-10 and you can have triple that. 

But a good nights rest was had in the hut with 5 others. 

Gorgeous bush on the top of a rise looking over Canterbury Plains. The track is very up and down. 

As tired as they look, I would have loved to be with them. But everyone has things that they can no longer do.

 Two sticks looking like NZ!!

Happy trampers, ready for their meat pie on the way home.