Another Window Bites the Dust... Rving New Zealand

What is that? I don't know. That means get out of Queenstown. That means yeah. And then there's a sheep shearing show right here. It's dolphin time. Who's ready? I just woke up. It's like quarter to six. About to get some stuff done. You know what? It's still kind of windy. I think I'll close the boys windows. I closed the top one. Behind. And there's just a little piece of metal. I look down and there's nothing. I swear we're really good up here. Oh my gosh. I swear the winds are strong here. Occasionally you may hear what sounds like a World War II air raid siren go off in Queenstown. This is not signaling that someone is trying to attack New Zealand with nuclear weapons but signaling volunteer firefighters to get down to the station because there's a house fire car accident. Kittens stuck up in a tree. Okay so they're signaling the firemen to come down to the station because there's like gale force winds. Yeah. Okay. A window broke. You know what that means? What? A hundred percent chance of rain. Come on. It's coming. The rain is coming. The clouds are... It doesn't really say a hundred percent chance of rain. Look Arrowtown. It's 90 percent, 8 a.m. 100 percent, 100 percent, 100 percent. I think you're getting pretty dang good at taping up windows. This is so ridiculous. We don't have a ladder this time. Dang. You want to give me a trash bag and I'll work on the window? This is kind of embarrassing. Kind of? Mark is it centered? Uh yeah it looks good but it's not high enough. Is that good? Well no it needs to be it's it needs to be up above that thing to make a good seal. Last time this thing fell out. Why didn't we think of the ladder the first time? I don't know. We officially have no good side now for drone footage of this rig. Both sides have a plastic window but you know why Trish is so good at doing this now? That when the drone's way up in the air and the rig's driving down the road you can hardly even tell. So I am listening to music for this weekend's video which I usually do for hours and forwarding you Trisha and forwarding the emails from Vernon and Penelope on some things that we can see between here through the Mount Cook area, Pukaki and Tikapu including a mountain bike ride that they recommended. So I forwarded those to you so let's do this for like the next two hours and then make our way out of here. Sounds like a plan. There's our new window. It's really embarrassing. I mean all we did is just go to sleep. I guess Caleb didn't wake up. We woke up and heard the wind and closed our window. I didn't I didn't know Caleb's was open. It's the street sign. All right which way do I turn? It looks like we have a two hour and 20 minute drive. We have full water. Our cassette and gray tank are empty. We're three-quarter tank on fuel. Things are looking good. We're down and we're down two windows. What do you think? Should we dry camp here? This is outstanding. There's a picnic table and everything. There is and yes and this is the bike path to ride your bike all along the blue water. Wow. Trisha. Yes sir. Where are we going? What are we doing? We are going as far as we can. We've decided to keep driving. We're at Lake Tikapoo. It's beautiful. This whole drive has been stunning. It's like driving through Bakersfield but then every 15 minutes you get to this gorgeous turquoise lake. All right Bakersfield might not be the best example because there's pine trees around here but you know what I mean. Flat open valleys. That's California by the way. So all right so we've decided that because we've decided that we're in the mood to drive and when we get in these moods to drive. Head southeast on pioneer drive. We drive. Sounds good. This gentleman's asking me if the tree is talking back. It was at this moment that he knew. You always have to be careful. First of all before you have a conversation like that you check which way the lens is going don't you. Goes to prove that New Zealanders really are not camera shy. They come up and say hi. Haven't met a Kiwi yet that has been afraid to be on the camera. No. That just went down. I don't know what just happened but it's very exciting. I think Beau was not doing his job. We're at the point B&B. You can stay here. You can park your rig here or you can watch a sheep shearing show here. Twice a day. Twice a day 1 30 and 4. It was one of a triplet so we took it off the mother. Yeah you don't need to stop. He does. Oh my goodness. He really slammed that. Yeah well done. All right so we have arrived at where we might be staying tonight. We found this through the campable app. It's $30 if we stay here and then we heard sheep shearing show. We're in. We are in and we got a little dog and we got to feed a little sheep. There's a ram in here. We've been here for all of five minutes and things have kicked off. We're here with a couple from London and we're in Chicago. She was born in Chicago and then moved back to London. So we're excited to record this sheep shearing. It was on our on our New Zealand bucket list. I don't know how you come here and you don't get a little piece of this. Yes a little piece of a sheep. Hello. This is the ram man and he's two years old and our breed are dry stars and you shear them twice a year and their wool is used for carpentry where all other breeds are only shorn once a year. You want to leave a 10? Trish come come on. Come on feed. Trish has fed once before. Go ahead. Go ahead. I don't want to cut in your length. No but I'm not in line. He's not in line. Three of us. Keep your hand flat. Something there that's coming up six months growth. Oh yeah. All right yeah. And that on other breeds would be 12 and some wouldn't grow that. You shear every sheep the same way. Start on the belly and finish on the back leg where we go 100 now. We just have enough for the show. Farm used to when it was a working farm in 600 acres they had 2,000. I'll show you a photo there afterwards. And that there is my headpiece. Not a very valuable piece of wool which we'll tell you more about afterwards. Some say I need now. This is incredible. It's like spa day over here for the sheep. Can you imagine? I'd be like running. Oh yeah. It's gonna feel really light. Really light and nice. Now if you like to rub your hand on the sheep or feel mine. Yeah. See how it goes oily. That's your lanolin. They make creams from. Come on Trish. And they press it out of your merino. I can feel it on my fingers. That helps keep the sun and the rain off them. Oh wow. So it's their own sunscreen? Yeah. Wow. I'll give you some of it in the cream form there afterwards. Now two weeks time I'll have five milligroups back on them and in six months back out for shearing again. Right. As I say that's only in your dry so it's other breeds once a year. So wool comes over here where we're sorting it into two grades. We're taking out what you can see left behind up there. They're called the pieces which come off the legs the belly and the hip and they're only worth one dollar a kilo. But the rest of your wool the longer white that comes off the body of the sheep unfortunately now is only worth two dollars a kilo and on an average the Drysdales cut three kilo at two dollars gives you six dollars of wool times it by two because we share them twice a year is only twelve dollars. Which is not a lot. So what happens now the wool goes into the press there and it's pressed into a bale like that there and that weighs 150 kilos on average. Station to station shearing them. The wool is sorted, pressed, put off to the market. See this water? It's amazing. It's so gorgeous and it's super tame today because this normally would crash everything else. So anyway I have a tip for those of you traveling with teenagers because the reality is your teens are not going to want to come out and explore with you all the time. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. In my opinion or in my experience there's a threshold. They're like topped out. I don't want to go for another walk. I don't want to see another seagull. Okay just I'm done. So anyway instead of forcing them to come we just tell them what we did afterwards. We say we're gonna go here. You want to come? No I don't want to go. And then we come back and we're like oh my gosh it was the coolest thing. We saw seals and we saw and then next time what usually happens is hey we're gonna go over here and we're gonna go see this. Okay let me get my shoes. No argument. You just have to release your expectation that they're gonna be up and ready every time you want to go. We're done. We're back. We're back from the dolphin encounter. We had a beautiful cup of coffee like everywhere in New Zealand. Once you're done, once you get off the boat they take you back to a cafe where you can get hot showers in the cafe and whatnot. So that's quite nice. Yeah especially if you're dry camping you can come in here and you can use the dolphin encounter as your opportunity to take a shower and be ready for the day. Yes. So anyway I have a few things to share. What do you got? Well first of all if you're doing any kind of camping with bathing suits bring a carabiner that doesn't rust and then you can hang up your suit anywhere to dry. Just a side note. That's a hot tip. That's a hot tip. Okay I have some more dolphin facts. You do? I love facts. She's been fun-filled facts this whole thing. All right. Backed it up. All right. Okay so did you know that a pod, a school, no did you know that a pod of dolphins can range from a hundred to a thousand individual dolphins? Amazing. They said today they were probably about three to four hundred. It was incredible. It was incredible and then I guess I was swimming with a nursing pod. Oh really? They all hang out together, the moms, because the dad doesn't partake in the raising. I was with dads. You were with dads. I was with dads. Circling down. Yes. Having fun. Yes. You found the mom's group. I found the mom's group. We chatted. It was great. Now one thing I will say that is pretty neat about this experience is that unlike some wildlife tours particularly in other countries. Yes. Sometimes tours can change the behaviors of animals or maybe make it artificial. Yes. They feed them or they entice them or they do things that kind of changes the way. That is just so not the case here and it made it and you could tell and it made it that much better. They were out there looking for the dolphins and it's like when the when the boats started coming the dolphins started coming to the boats like like puppies. Yes. And then when the boat left they were like hey where are you going? We're having fun. We're swimming. We're swimming. They were swimming up in the bow. But there's researchers that go out on the boat and they watch the boats from the hilltops to make sure that everyone's doing what they're supposed to do not to disrupt the natural behavior of the dolphins. So that's really interesting. It really does. The wild nature of the experience. Yeah. Really made it that much more magical. This is a highly recommended activity. Yes. And it's not inexpensive either. No. But we haven't been doing like massive expensive things while we're here because the scenery is so gorgeous. That's right. And you can do so many things for free. It's you know it's a big deal to come here if you're from the states. Yeah. And then get a rig so when you're here you should at least know that you can freedom camp. Yep. Most of the hikes and things are free. There's places to take showers and use bathrooms for free. And then you can and then you can pick and choose a few of the activities. Yes. To really big rocks in and say I don't want to go home unless I do this one thing. So anyway did you know that a dolphin can live for 20 to 30 years? Just you know your knowledge of dolphins just ceases to amaze me. I know. Let me just dive into this. Okay. When you got more? Dive in. Very punny. Okay. Dusky dolphins. We swim with dusky dolphins. Yesterday I thought they were called dusty dolphins. Okay. Dusky dolphins. Yes. Okay. Meet frequently. And it's not only for purely... I can't even say it. Okay. Wait. Wait. Let me start. You're starting to blush Trish. Okay. Let me start over. Okay. Dusky dolphins. That's what they're called. Dusky dolphins mate frequently and it is not always purely for reproductive purposes. It says it in the in the brochure folks. I'm just the messenger. Just the messenger. Okay. And new calves are born in the spring. So that's what happened. It's the end of their calving season. Okay. So that's why there were so many babies today. Oh. Isn't that neat? Yeah. Very cool. I just love how these dolphins do these back flips. And not just one either do they do back flip after back flip after they just come out of the water and then they come out of the water again like a half a second later 10 feet away. Yeah. And then they do that 10 or 20 times. You can tell who the class clowns are. Yes. Our time here is coming to an end you know. Don't talk about it. It's very sad. Very sad. Well we have a lot going on in the next two weeks. Well yeah I know. I say it's sad but um when we think about where we're gonna go and the people we're gonna see when we start traveling the states. Yes. This summer. Yes. When the RV season in the states really starts heating up. Oh yeah. Oh it's gonna be a blast. Not to mention Summer to Remember 2019. We've got designs already we're working on. I'm so excited. We have something really fun paired up with it and we're really excited to share it. Yes. So anyway. Yay!