Saturday, June 23, 2018

Shel, no such thing as too much local fruit. It won't be around for long! DS

Weight: forgot to do it

I had a really nice time at dinner last night with my girlfriends. We ate at a restaurant I'd never been to before back in a canyon with very windy oak canopied roads to get there. It's a Mexican restaurant and the majority of the seating is outside on a huge deck over a ravine that is built around giant old sycamore and oak trees wrapped in fairy lights and bright bougainvillea in all colors spilling here and there. The food is not much to write home about, but the setting is gorgeous. And my poor unsuspecting friend got sung happy birthday as they plopped an enormous navy velvet and gold brocade sombrero on her head. She was a good sport, but it was a sight requiring many pictures for later extortion and bribery purposes.

And I wore a real outfit! My size 10 jeans fit just fine over the compression and ever-present diaper belts, so my guess is I might be an 8 one day under all of this garbage. I haven't been a single digit size since I was a single digit age.

Did I mention we three girls are planning a hiking trip to New Zealand next year? We met hiking ages ago. And I have always wanted to hike in New Zealand. The tour company we want to use is booked for their Feb and Mar trips and I don't think I'll be back in fighting form by this Nov or Dec, so it's going to be be next November - a very long way away, but there you have it. After, we're going to fly to Sydney and spend several days there. None of us has ever been to either country and can't imagine when we'd ever go again, so we're doing it up!

Not much on tap today. I haven't gotten around to honeying myself up (I'm so tired of wound care!) and need to walk the dog a few times and forage for food, but other than that, no plans.

Good wishes to all...

I'm excited about the trip! Being a ways away gives you a longer time to enjoy planning for it.

That restaurant sounds gorgeous!

And work on elevation climbing. Lots of mountain hikes there! And one icy hike on a glacier that you helicopter to. Sounds scary, but I'm not going to wimp out.

Wooohoooo!!!!! I love this!

The description you painted of the restaurant--I believe even a bowl of undercooked goldfish w/sand cakes and ketchup would taste good.

Cecily! Tell me more about your New Zealand trip plans, please. The Milford Track is on my bucket list (it's only a 5-day trip that's not that tough and you get to stay in actual beds every night and people cook for you and serve you wine, thus I've saved it for my old age). ;)

My husband and I have been to New Zealand three times -- once you go there, you just wind up going back and back and back and ....

It's my favorite place in the world.

We decided to use Backroads as our tour company. People seem to use them again and again and they do a lot of higher end active trips, which suits me better than hostels and tents. I'm a high end girl, what can I say! This one is 9 days on South Island. We liked that there were different lengths of hikes on the same day in the same places in case someone in your group wants a long hike or their feet are only up for a short one.

I looked at so many NZ hiking tours, my eyes crossed. But many had otherwise cool things that didn't appeal to me/us like a night on a boat or cruising of some sort (I get really seasick) or bike rides on several days (we're not bike riders, more interested in hiking) or they were 14 days long and we would like several days in Sydney after and that's a long time to be gone. Hopefully we've picked well!

The prices aren't bad. I so wish I could get DH to do something like this.

That sounds like a fantastic trip! Something to really look forward to!