A week in review; site selection, cooking, and Halloween

Greetings again. It has been a bit of a slower week with the holiday Monday so I had a lot of time on my hands last weekend. It has been quite a while since I just went exploring so I hopped in the car and took a tour to Wellsford, Kaipara Harbour on the west coast, and then back through Warkworth for some Groceries. There was not much to stop and do along this particular route, one walking trail that I will try out next sunny day I have off, but otherwise it was just a nice weekend drive. The road to Wellsford is a winding roller coaster ride through beautiful forested areas with large conifers and silver ferns.

Wellsford was essentially some houses and shops along a stretch of road, but the area around it was what makes this area so special. Numerous rolling green hills, broken occasionally by a clump of trees. Sheep and other cattle dotted the landscape everywhere.

As I approached the west coast, I was treated to a single lookout, these continuous rolling hills that eventually dipped down into the enormous harbour that is the Kaipara. I am working on stitching the pictures together to get a nice Panoramic shot!

The rest was low lying fields with small shoulders that didn't really allow for stopping and taking pictures. There were also a large number of motorcycles around, enjoying what I suspect to be an otherwise quiet road in the nice weather. As I turned back to Warkworth, the road remained very narrow, but headed back into forest. After some much needed groceries I wandered back to campus to get some cooking done, which turned out to be very fortunate since a field course showed up Tuesday, ultimately taking over much of the kitchen. For those of you that worry about me eating well, I wouldn't. I made a weeks long feast of butter chicken (not pictured), a spicy curry, Singapore noodles with honey garlic chicken, and a big stack of naan bread for the curry and dinner at Jan's (where we enjoyed some very nerdy discussion about Star Trek).

The majority of the rest of the week has consisted of planning my small scale experiment and getting equipment ready for the large scale experiment off of Rotoroa Island. Wednesday I did manage to get out to Jones Bay to look for my next site, and I may have found a nice shallow embayment to set up a few experimental beds. It is not a sandy beach for lounging in the sun, but I can think of worse places to work, and I mean that with a large dose of sarcasm.

Thursday was Halloween, which is a poorly celebrated even here in New Zealand. Mind you, it isn't what it used to be when I was young in Canada either. Either way, we had a "Halloween" themed poker night last night. So I quickly slapped together a cake and decorated it accordingly. I donned my star trek uniform in a minimum effort to dress up, and headed out to lose 2 dollars and have some social interaction. It was a fun night including Leo's pumpkin (squash) that he carved. The effort was really nice and hopefully he can experience a fall Halloween instead of a spring one so that he can carve a real pumpkin. I brought my own Jack-O-Lantern.

And to finish off the week, I went today with Jan and Ben to Pakiri to get some mussels. Didn't need any myself, just went along for the walk. It was nice to get my feet wet and enjoy the feel of soft sand under my feet. Hopefully the weather will get better for this weekend so that I can enjoy another venture out!