Camping in a postcard - Winter off grid camping | Ashburton Lakes

Hey everyone, welcome to the Ashburton Lakes and welcome back to our channel. If you're new here, our family is on the road full time. We're making memories, traveling together, and this winter we're chasing winter experiences. I'm totally a weather nerd and for me there's nothing better than being amongst the extremes. We're trying to get into the coldest conditions we can in our caravan, well cold for New Zealand anyway, but we're totally up for the adventure especially when those places look like this. Must be some of the most amazing scenery in New Zealand, especially that hasn't been commercialized, and the best part is it's completely free to camp here. Now we've been here before but we've got some different things to show you this time around, so sit back, grab a drink, and enjoy our video of adventuring into the Ashburton Lakes of New Zealand. All right everybody, we are heading out for a spontaneous trip out to the Ashburton Lakes. We're not sure if we'll get there in the wintertime if we don't go now before we head into the Mackenzie country in Otago, which we didn't spend any time in the winter last year in Otago, so we're looking forward to getting down there, but we've got a low snow forecast and so we thought let's just go. It's only an hour from Ashburton here, so we've hooked up and we're on the road. So if you're not sure where we're headed, we're headed into inland Canterbury, into the Ashburton Lakes. There's a whole lot of different lakes out here with walks and a lot of cool views and exploring to be done, but before we get here we're going to stop in at Mount Summers to fill up with water. Mount Summers is a perfect little domain to come and dump and refill with water. There's a dump station here and lots of taps. You can also camp here. It's $29 a night with power, which is pretty good in the winter because it's plenty of light. It's a good base really if you're not really too keen to tow or drive a big motorhome or something into the into Ashburton Lakes, and you can just park up here and take a vehicle. You can go and see it all still. We always prefer those places that charge per site rather than per person because the kids can sometimes make it add up, but there is a playground there and full facilities. We stayed there last winter. It was good. Running late, I slowly mosey in. No hurry, no. At my own pace I go. And from the balcony, I hear the buzz of busy bees. The noise of frazzled people hurrying. Somewhere they'd rather be. What's the rush? I don't know cause I'm not in one. What's the rush? So glad to be back. One of our favorite spots. Almost a year later. Cool everyone. Well, we have come back out to Lake Camp in the Ashburton Lakes. We love this spot. We've got snow forecast, as I said earlier. We've also got some other friends that have met us here that we met in the Hawke's Bay, Matt and Mindy. So we're camping with them. We're sitting down at the lake. So I'm going to chuck this GoPro away. I'm really hoping the snow drops down here. Even if it comes halfway down the mountains, it'll look so cool. But here's our view for now. The reason I write to you daughter, these words of your well-weathered father, is I believe you were a gift too. After arriving later in the day, a quick dinner of leftover soup and some cheese quesadillas was a quick and easy dinner for us before the rough weather the next day. Well, we've been waiting all day for some snow. It's not supposed to snow until later on tonight. It's been a very, very moody day today and it's quite cold. It's about five degrees. It might be colder now, but we're hoping there's going to be some snow on these mountains in the morning. So this whole day was cold, grey and gloomy. It made for a slow day in the caravan. The kids did some extra schoolwork and not a whole lot else going on. Some days in the caravan are like that, waiting for the weather to improve. But this spot at Lake Camp seems to have its own microclimate because the next day was a major improvement. Good morning everybody. It was a cold one last night. It's still a minus 4.5. It's almost nine o'clock outside, but come and check out our view. Oh my. Looks like the edges of the lake have frozen overnight. So the kids are down there smashing ice by the look of it. She's frosty. These cold conditions aren't for everyone, but we prefer a minus five to a positive three degrees. The mud freezes, the air is crisp, and these are million dollar views. And we also pretty much get these places to ourselves. We heard in the summertime there can be 3,000 people here. That is definitely not our saying. Tell us about how cold it was. It's freezing. It feels like I've got. It's like minus 18 or something. A bit of the ice, the lake froze. A little bit, aye. Cool. Well, it's a nice crisp day today. We are going to head out to Lake Heron. We haven't been out there before. So another one of the Ashburton lakes. It's about a half an hour drive. So let's go and check it out. Get some different views. So we've made it to the Lake Heron camping area. It says that it's closed, but I think just the toilets and things are locked up. Pretty frosty. Doesn't look like it's seeing any sunshine in here. After driving out here, such a stunning drive through that big wide open valley with snow-capped mountains. Pretty quiet and peaceful out here. I imagine it's probably relatively quiet in the summertime. It says that you can book a camping site here. I don't know how long that lasts for, but it's $250. So I'm guessing that's the camping season, which is likely October through to May. A few more sites tucked up the back here. Wow. Wow. Wow. This is so flipping awesome. We're just so lucky to live in such a beautiful country, aren't we? And get to come out and explore these places. I'm going to go and chuck the drone up now and see if we can capture some beautiful bird's eye view. Want to leave the spot. It's too good, but we're going to go. There's a little kettle hole walk, which is like an old glacier lake kind of thing. We're going to go and check that out just a bit further back down the road. Well, it sounds as though it's a pretty short walk, 360 meters. I'll never get over these big, vast open wide spaces. So impressive. I'm not the kettle hole expert. I think it's something to do with when the glacier is coming down and a chunk of ice is left behind when the glacier retreats. And then maybe sometimes some gravel and stuff build up around it and then the ice melts and you're left with like a hole. A depression. A bowl. Kids having fun in it. The little story board back there also said that this is a part-time wetland. So I'm guessing in the springtime or when there's been a lot of rain, there's quite a bit of water sitting in here and there's all these different varieties of plants that start to flower and all kind of happens quite quickly. They see flower and then they're gone again. That'd be cool to see. They're growing in the kettle hole. We found a few of those little flowers growing here in the kettle hole. Riley's getting a photo. We spent quite a lot more time at a lake here and then what we thought we would. So we got back to camp quite late and everyone was pretty hungry so the kids got into making a bit of lunch. What's for your lunch? Toasty. What did you make that? What's in it? Cheese and ham and marmite. Is it good? A lot of people think we're a bit crazy coming to the South Island in winter but when the days are like this man it's crazy not to come down here. The North Island is just kind of damp and cold and a bit miserable and it is freezing here overnight. You do have to put up with that but the day is so still. It's 3 30 in the afternoon so that's how flat it is out there. Not a breath of air. The only ripples on that lake are from the swans out there. Well tonight for dinner we're having a very simple dinner. Just some sandwich burgers. So we've got some basically what you want. Toby's got fish fingers. Riley's got bacon. Jade's got mushrooms and hash brown. Making our own burgers. Good? We always enjoy these kinds of dinners. Kind of finishing up a bit of leftovers. Throwing it together. Don't have to put too much thought into it and it tastes good. Hopefully one of the nights we are in the South Island we'll get to minus 10 and hopefully that's tonight. What a spot for a coffee eh? She is a bit crispy this morning. What a beautiful morning here. The lake's got a bit more ice on it this morning. Minus 5.5 last night so it's our coldest night this winter so far. We're hoping to get to a minus 10 this winter is our hope. So we're on our way. Be awesome to see this lake fully frozen. Just think eh? You couldn't buy real estate in somewhere that's this beautiful. Cost millions if you could and we can bring our caravan out here and have this for free. It's amazing. Sweet well if you've made it this far everyone thanks for watching. It's been so cool hanging out here. I rate this place as being up but without the tourists. We are currently the only people here now and it's a Friday. We're going to leave. It's probably going to get a little bit busier over the weekend. We're off to a new spot and a new adventure and we'll see you in the next one. Catch you later. So I'm falling really far behind in my editing here. This part of New Zealand and the Canterbury High Country is some of my favourite places to be and I've got a lot of video to edit from our time here. We've still been hanging out for a hoarfrost and so far we've not been successful and we're running out of the right winter conditions for it too. But anyway we hope to see you in our next episode. Something that will be a little bit different from us anyway.