New Zealand Highlights

So, today I finally took down the New Zealand clock that I had placed at the top of this page... how sad! Most of you have probably seen the pictures from New Zealand, but I figured I'd post a few highlights of the trip here too...

We rented two awesome campervans that we drove around the North and South Islands. The back had a bed and little kitchen area. We did quite a few geocaches in New Zealand and even managed to get a few International First to Finds! This picture is of our van at the first geocache we did in New Zealand.

The lakes in New Zealand are fed by glaciers and are unbelievably blue. The first day it was a bit overcast and rainy, so the color didn't show up as much, but it was still incredible!

The second day we made our way to the ocean to see the Little Blue Penguins. New Zealand is the only place in the world where you can see them naturally. They were so cute and we wanted to bring one home to play with Pilot! We also saw Yellow-Eyed Penguins and the Great Albatross (again only place in the world to see them on the mainland).

One of the highlights of the trip was a helicopter ride that included a glacier landing! Our pilot was great and even gave us two different glacier landings although the tour only included one! It had snowed on the mountains the night before so we were able to play in fresh, waist deep snow up at 12,000 feet. It was an experience that we will never forget.

A few days later, we climbed and rappelled in a cave on the North Island for over four hours. The adventure started with a 100 foot rappel in the cave down a waterfall! It was pitch black and certainly got our adrenaline pumping. We did 4 more rappels and lots of climbing under and over rocks and through underground rivers. The trip ended with a rock climb up a waterfall as we emerged out of the cave.

We had a few other adventures including hiking, fishing (New Zealand is the trout fishing capital of the world), rabbit shearing, and soaking in the water at Hot Water Beach (it was boiling!). Kenny was also honored as a Maori chief... you have to see the video! It was a great trip and we have tons of pictures, so if you haven't checked them out feel free to look at our online albums.

Our second van

Jen's fish :)

Rabbit Shearing

New Zealand Hippies

Our new pet...

Just kidding... we just thought this was way too funny of a picture to not show everyone. Man, he looks cold!

We won!!!

So, we have been playing volleyball every Sunday night for the past few weeks in the Santee Rec League.

The team: Kenny & Jen, Eric & Sheree, and Danny & Tonita (big surprise huh?)

Anyway, until now, most of our games have been pretty close, but the win was always elusive. Until last Sunday. We finally won a game! This was no easy feat since we were down one player… Tonita was in Nor Cal.

Now, just so you all know… we aren’t terrible players (at least we don’t think so). However, until recently only 2 of us had ever actually played volleyball competitively. So I think we are doing pretty good :)

Anyway, if any of you are ever in Santee on a Sunday night and want to cheer us on… or just want a cheap laugh at our expense, stop by!

Pictures!

We are home and mostly settled back into the routine of things... although we still can't cook for ourselves without a few surprises thanks to Danny, Tonita, Rebecca & Hannah. They had fun ripping the labels off our canned goods while we were gone! I guess we had it coming after doing it to D&T for their honeymoon :)

We promise that soon we will get the details of the trip posted, but for now you can amuse yourself with our pictures... only attempt to look at these if you have plenty of time to spare as we took a TON and we haven't sorted through them yet to delete the repeats or bad pictures :)
A few might need some explaining

New Zealand Slideshow #1

New Zealand Slideshow #2

New Zealand Slideshow #3

One week down...

And one more to go... We are in Auckland (North Island) now and going to head south for a few days to check out the Pacific Rim of Fire and some volcanic action! The weather on the South Island was cold, about 45F in the day and 32F at night, maybe colder, but here it is a warm 60F and that is with an overcast layer of cloud.

Again, we apologize to all for the massive amount of photos taken. :)

Queenstown

Well, we have made it over 2000 Kilometers and are in Queenstown at the moment. Today we drove from the East Coast down to the Southernmost tip and are now heading North to the West Coast. It is beautiful and we have already taken 1 Gig of photos... we apologize in advance to those of you who will have to sit through them all!

See you all in a few weeks :)

We arrived!

We arrived in New Zealand safe and sound. I only have a few minutes before this internet connection dropps off, but I wanted to let you all know that we are doing well and having a blast!

Bye!

One Quick Cache before we leave...

On Mother's Day Eric, Sheree, Danny, Tonita, Kenny and I decided to do a quick Geocache. This cache was to be Eric & Sheree's 500th (they snuck up on us and passed our number of caches found a few weeks ago!).

We decided that for a 500th cache it needed to be special... dangerous... daring... fun... and out of the ordinary. A simple 1/1 would not do! (For those of you who do not Geocache a "1/1" means difficulty "1" on a scale of 1-5 and terrain "1" also on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being the easiest... what we like to call a "Cache and Dash" where we basically can drive right up to the cache and see it from the car!)

Eric found a lovely cache called "Secret Passage to Hogsmeade" and we decided to go for it! In order to find this cache it looked as if we might have to trudge through some murky water, but we figured it hadn't rained in a while so maybe the water would all be gone... we thought wrong.


As we approached the cache we realized that we indeed would be heading into a tunnel full of knee-deep water. Good thing we had all worn old clothes and shoes! We managed to make our way into the tunnel and soon the water level lowered... but the darkness increased! As we began to wonder if this was maybe not one of the smartest things we have done... but if we died at least we would all die together... we found it. We quickly snapped a picture of the cache and headed out, because man, it smelled pretty bad in there.

On our way out we noticed a little bird hanging from the top of the tunnel and then realized... That is not a bird... That is a BAT! We all clung to each other as we tried to duck out of the way of this little bat and finally managed to shoo him outside. I only wish we had a video! If you look really close you can see the bat in the picture...

We are hoping to do many more caches in New Zealand, but hopefully none so adventurous!

New Zealand, Home of Middle-earth

We leave for New Zealand on Friday!!!

About New Zealand:

New Zealand's spectacularly beautiful landscape includes vast mountain chains, steaming volcanoes, sweeping coastlines, deeply indented fiords and lush rainforests.
Comparable in size and/or shape to Great Britain, Colorado or Japan, New Zealand has a population of only 4 million - making it one of the world's least crowded countries. It is a haven for those seeking peace, rejuvenation and relaxation as well as a playground for thrill seekers and adventurers. A temperate climate with relatively small seasonal variation makes it an ideal year-round holiday destination.

Time Difference: New Zealand is one of the first places in the world to see the new day, 12 hours ahead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Check out the current New Zealand time & date at the top of this page.

Climate: The north of New Zealand is subtropical and the south temperate. The warmest months are December, January and February, and the coldest June, July and August.
In summer, the average maximum temperature ranges between 20-30ºC and in winter between 10-15ºC. You can check on weather conditions in New Zealand on the New Zealand Met Service website.

Autumn- March to May are New Zealand’s autumn months. While temperatures are a little cooler than summer, the weather can be excellent, and it is possible to swim in some places until April. While New Zealand’s native flora is evergreen, there are many introduced deciduous trees. Colourful changing leaves make autumn a scenic delight, especially in regions such as Central Otago and Hawke’s Bay, which are known for their autumn splendour.

We will be bringing our computer so hopefully we will be able to keep everyone up to date on our adventures.

Camping!

This weekend promised to be the first weekend without rain in months so we decided to go camping with Danny & Tonita. With only a 10% chance of rain, we loaded up the car with our tent (no rain fly, but we did bring the poles this time), warm weather sleeping bags, and an extra set of clothing (no gloves or warm clothing).

After picking up some food at the grocery store, we met Danny & Tonita in Ramona and headed over to the campground to set up. Unfortunately, the campground was completely booked for a YMCA kids camping event that weekend… good thing we had a backup plan! We decided to go shooting at the BLM range and then drive to Palomar to find a campsite called Fry Creek.

Shooting was a blast (no pun intended) and Kenny’s black powder pistol worked so much better outside then at the indoor range… let’ just say gun powder, smoke and a poorly ventilated room do not mix. We all managed to pull of a bunch of rounds before it stared to drizzle. Figuring it would be no fun to shoot or clean up the guns in the pouring rain, we all made a quick exit and left for the campground.

After driving for about an hour though thick, thick fog and clouds and gaining 3,000 feet in elevation, we finally reached Fry Creek only to discover it was closed! We managed to find another campsite in Palomar State Park with 5 sites left for the night. I guess everyone else had the same idea to go camping! The campsite was great and we had fun hiking with the dogs and sitting by the fire playing with fireworks. Yes, Tonita had brought illegal fireworks into a State Park… well, they were only sparklers so that makes it okay right?!?

That night we went to sleep pretty early because it was so cold outside and none of us had brought warm clothing. We were a bit worried about the tent because as soon as we got inside it began to rain. It rained all night long, but we managed to stay dry… I guess our tent doesn’t need a fly.

About 6:00am we awoke to the sound of Danny & Tonita talking and zipping and unzipping their tent. Figuring they wanted to get an early start on the day and were packing up their tent, we tried our best to ignore them and go back to sleep. Finally we figured we couldn’t sleep so we asked what they were doing and if they were trying to wake us up. “It snowed and our tent is collapsing!” they yelled back. No way, we told them they were lying and that we wouldn’t fall for that joke. Well, they weren’t lying and we unzipped our tent to discover that it had snowed about 2 inches that morning and their 3 season tent was indeed ready to collapse! By dumb luck we had brought our camouflage, extreme cold weather North Face tent, which lived up to its name. We were nice and toasty and had no idea that it had even been cold enough outside to snow.

Well, needless to say, we decided that we did not want to cook breakfast in the snow… besides, the eggs were frozen! After packing up the tents and gear and letting the puppies play in the snow, we drove up to a little restaurant and had breakfast.

Since it had stopped snowing, we decided to drive to Palomar Observatory and look around. The Observatory was mostly closed, but what we did get to see was pretty interesting. We can’t wait to get up there some day when everything is running.

Without a doubt this weekend was one of the best camping trips we have been on. It was Pilot’s first time camping and sleeping in a tent- he did great and had so much fun. When we got home he slept for about 2 days straight! The spur of the moment plans, random events, great company (we love you Danny & Tonita) and of course the SNOW made it a weekend we won’t forget!

More pictures to come soon!

Cache-a-Thon

Whew! We just got back from a fun weekend Geocaching in La Quinta near Palm Springs with Kenny's brother, Eric and his wife Sheree. It was a great weekend full of a few surprises.

On Friday night we left San Diego around 7:30pm hoping to make it to our campground by 10:30pm before it closed. This was not to be... We ended up arriving- after many side streets and u-turns- at our campsite around midnight. Unfortunately for us, the gate to the campground locked at 10:30! We had spent about 15 minutes trying to see if we could drive around the gate or if we could pick the lock, when Sheree simply slid the chain and lock off of the gate and opened it! I guess the last person forgot to make sure the lock was actually fastened to something!

Once we arrived at out campsite, which was nothing more than a piece of dirt with a picnic table, we figured we would just set up the tent quickly and get to bed. Well... the tent was there, but where were the poles?!? After realizing we had left the tent poles at home, we were about ready to call it quits and find a hotel. However, it took all our navigational skills just to get to the campground and no one wanted to get back in the car and drive around for another hour in search of a hotel that would probably run $200+ a night, so we backed the Explorer up to two palm trees and used a bit of strings and ingenuity to create a makeshift shelter for the four of us! It wasn’t pretty, but it worked :)

The next day we awoke ready to begin what we had come to do… Power Cache. La Quinta is a hotspot for Geocaching. I guess there is nothing else to do out there in the desert. After downing some Hot Chocolate and SPAM for breakfast, we loaded into the Explorer and began our cache-a-thon. Long story short, we managed to find 80+ geocaches on Saturday alone!

Because we arrive back to the campsite once again after midnight (this time we had the gate code), we had no time for a campfire or Smores… so, we ate them for breakfast the next morning along with some good old Jiffy Pop. Camping isn’t camping without slightly unpoped popcorn that tastes a bit rubbery with a tin foil aftertaste.

After making sure we got the whole “camping experience,” we loaded our gear up and headed off to do a few more geocaches before we left for home. We found over 20 geocaches in just a few hours and with over 100 caches for the weekend we decided to call it quits and head home.

Check out our pictures… and no comments about our tent :)





Our 100th Geocache find for the weekend!

"Ranch of the 7th Range"
N 33° 37.626 W 116° 15.839

Eric & Sheree with

"La Quinta Early Man" Cache

N 33° 38.743 W 116° 19.223

"Geo Tax" Cache
N 33° 38.833 W 116° 19.064

That is us way up there :)

Kenny and Eric with a cache!

Merry Christmas!

We can't believe it is Christmas time already! This year has flown by... as always. It seems that every year goes by faster than the one before. This year has been very busy, but fun. A quick recap...

Early this year we purchased a new airplane for our flight school, Rison Aviation. It is a cute little Cessna 150. Rison continues to grow. We have three instructors and many wonderful students. It is great that Kenny has a job that he looks forward to every day. Flying is a great way to make a living!

Jen is also doing well with her business, Blue Yonder Girl. This year we again went to the Miramar Air Show as a vendor. This year it once again rained! Despite the rain, we had a great time.

Jen is still working at Kennon S. Shea & Associates. She has been there for 5 years! This month she received a promotion and is now the Financial Analyst in the Corporate Office.

This year was filled with many travels and adventures as well.

In March we went to Ventura and camped a few days at the beach with Jen's family. While there we celebrated Jim & Jolene's 25th anniversary!

In April we visited Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon along with Kenny's brother Eric. We had a great time camping and Geocaching (our new hobby).

In May we moved! That is right, we no longer live in a hangar at the airport. We moved into our new house at the end of May with lots of help from both sets of parents.

In June we went to Hume Lake with Jen's family. Jamie & David celebrated their one year anniversary and we celebrated out 5 year!

In September we started school... yes, we are back in school. We are finishing up our undergrad at CSU Chico. The great thing is that all our classes are online. This year we also enrolled in the law degree program at Southern California University. We will be done with law school in 4 years and will then take the dreaded Bar Exam! We would like to practice aviation law.

In September we also were able to check one of our goals of the list... we went to Alaska! We had so much fun visiting with friends and seeing the beauty of God's creation. It was a great adventure and one that we can’t wait to do again.

This year also brought a new addition to our family. That is right… we were tired of waiting and so we adopted… a puppy! We found our little guy in the pound and just couldn’t resist. Pilot… yes, that is his name… is the perfect little dog and fits in great with our family. He is just over two years old and the cutest guy you will ever meet… his pictures don’t do him justice.

All in all 2005 was a great year, full of adventures and blessings from the Lord. So much happened that it is impossible to fit it all in here. We can’t wait to see what 2006 will bring. We hope that you all have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2006!

Blue Skies!

Kenny, Jen & Pilot

Pilot

Here is our little guy.

His eyes aren't normally blue :)