From Akaroa to Mt. Cook

I woke up this morning to this:

I got up at 5:45am because I found out that my last surviving grandparent died yesterday. I knew that if someone was sick or dying (someone not directly in my immediate family) I would not to be told because that’s the way my family rolls…but since I work with both my parents and happened upon an email from my mom saying that she was out of the office for the week not checking email (suspicious) I knew it had to be my grandmother. So all night I woke up to check texts and finally before 6am I saw my mom’s response to my txt asking ‘IS NANA OK???’ with ‘I’m so sorry honey, we really didn’t want to tell you yet but she died last night. She’s finally at peace’.

And it’s weird because I haven’t seen my grandmother in years (she had progressive dementia and didn’t recognize me), but still being so far away and not being able to be there for the funeral, or for my mom to help clear out her apartment was really painful. So after snuggling both my kids, I took off on a mountain hike on our final morning at the B&B Farmstead in Akaroa…and while singing at the top of my lungs to sheep who ran away from me…this is the moment I will remember from the day she died:

So I said goodbye to my Nana on this walk and I know that she is in a happy place.

Off to Mt. Cook now on a 5 hr journey that took us from sun and sea to clouds and rain.

Leo Experience in his words: Today we started off in the beautiful Paua Bay. It was really beautiful and I was really sad that we had to leave, once we got in the car it took us 5 hours to get to Mt. Cook. In Mt. Cook it is raining and I don’t really like that.

We stopped at a really funky restaurant in Geraldine (that’s a funny name) and I had a hamburger and fries. We were supposed to go on a hike today at Lake Tekapo but it was really rainy and we didn’t get to go – I was really sad we didn’t get to go because I didn’t get my candy.

(Erica’s input here – the candy purchased predicated on the children hiking without complaints…they are not hard done by…Leo has had French fries at practically every meal since we’ve been here and neglected to mention the vanilla milkshake at ‘said funky restaurant’)

Leo again: We are staying at motel with a really nice view of the snow capped mountains and I find it crazy that while my friends are at school I get to be 20 ft away from a snowcapped mountain.

Erica’s portion: it’s rainy, freezing and super cloudy. And will stay this way all week…so the glacier boat tour, the 3 hr hike…definitely not gonna happen. I am bummed but I guess it’s better to be stuck in a storm front at the base of a mountain, than being stuck in a beach town when it’s sunny. caveat…with kids. personally I’d trade better weather for the hiking portion of the trip compared to the beach portion but I’m working on the whole – this trip isn’t about me thing….3 days in I’m doing pretty well. Let’s see if it can keep it up.

If it’s still raining tomorrow we’ll back track to Lake Tekapo and maybe pet some alpacas? It’s supposed to be sunny only an hour away but we’ll see!