Welcome to MIddle Earth

Blog Post #4

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I have a few days to catch up on - we've been very busy!  We left Auckland Sunday  morning and made the 2 hour drive to a town called MataMata - most famous for being one of the set locations for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies - welcome to Hobbiton, Middle Earth.  Admittedly, I thought it was going to be pretty cheesy, but when we got there, the set was absolutely amazing.  Apparently, after the LOTR movies, they were contracted to tear down the sets, but with the success of the movies, the farm owners re-negotiated to have a permanent set built for the Hobbit movies, and the set is regularly maintained.  The detail is amazing, the plants and wildlife are spectacular, plus they give you a bunch of trivia about the movie. 

Side note - rumor has it that NZ has been in a severe drought recently, which you wouldn't know since it has rained pretty much every day that we've been here!  We are thankful that the rain breaks for periods of time every day and we've been fairly lucky with timing certain events between downpours.  At least the weather is warm enough to do our things even in the rain.

After Hobbiton, we drove one more hour to Rotorua.  Rotorua is similar to Yellowstone, in that it is known for its geothermal activity.  In English, that means it smells like sulfur/rotten eggs.  I was really happy when we booked our hotel late and we were still able to get right on the edge of the scenic Lake Rotorua - little did I know that our hotel was situated on a spot called Sulfur Flats.  To say that the smell is overpowering is an understatement… Luckily, we are only in this hotel for two days and the rest of the town is fine.  Smell aside, it is very pretty here - and lots of fun stuff to do.

We had a rough afternoon - spent a lot of it lost trying to find different spots to visit, and finally made it to The Wai Topu Geo Thermal Park at 4:30.  They close at 6 and don't let anyone in after 4:45.  Plus, it was a raining pretty hard.  But we decided to go for it - we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves in those conditions.  The park was very cool and the highlights were a flourscent green thermal pond (think Chicago River on St. Patrick's Day) and bubbling mud pits that explode like geysers on a regular basis.

Damon's driving has gotten better - I think the biggest challenge he is still having is turning on the windshield wipers every time he wants to turn.  Yes, even that is on the "wrong" side.  I'm sure a lot of people know that New Zealanders are known as "kiwis" - the kiwi is a flightless bird, which is nearly extinct.  As Damon is driving, he could hardly contain his excitement when he thought he saw a kiwi on the side of the road.  Sadly, it was just a chicken.

We went out for a nice dinner but by 9pm, we were tired and went back to the stinky hotel to sleep.  The food here has been okay - they like gourmet presentation of food, but we haven't found great dishes.  Things are literally stacked like 8" high and everything contains beets.

We have a bunch of fun stuff lined up for tomorrow!  Can't wait.

We made it - barely

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BLOG POST 3:

Picking up where we left off in Tokyo...  we spent four hours in the Tokyo Narita airport waiting for the second leg of our trip.  At first, not so bad, but then the tired started to kick in as it was roughly 3am Chicago time by the time our plane boarded.  To kill time, we walked the International terminal a few times - they are really big on Kit Kat candy there - all sorts of strange flavors - like green tea Kit Kat and some raspberry flavor - strange.

Anyways... big shout out to my friend Danae, who saved me from falling asleep on my feet.  Back in October, Danae was in Tokyo and I asked her to make a treasure hunt for us.  She hid notes all around the United lounge for us to find.  We found 3/4 - not too bad!  Especially since one of them involved asking a man working in a computer cube if he could check under the desk for our note - he did, and we found it - he thought it was cool.  Thanks, Danae!

So imagine we are over tired and getting ready to board the plane.  I'm talking to the desk agent to get our updated boarding passes when she asks if we have our Australia Visas.  I'm like - what visas?  11 months of planning, and somehow I missed that we need a visa for Australia, where we are stopping on the way home.  She takes our boarding passes and tells us we cannot board without visas, so with less than 15 minutes to boarding, Damon is on 3G trying to get our visas.  Then they start boarding the plane - one visa down.  They are halfway done boarding and we finally have our visas and they let us on.  Very scary close call.

Not much to say about the second flight - it was pretty miserable.  Squished between Damon and some other guy for 11 hours was rough.  We probably got in about 4-5 hours of sleep, but it was not awesome.  Flew the brand new 787-Dreamliner.  Not really impressed - thought it would be luxurious, but really no different than a regular plane, and no refreshing face spritzer in the lav.  I will say that Air New Zealand does get the gold star for their safety briefing, which is a Lord of the Rings theme and they have a bunch of the real actors showing us how to put on oxygen masks and buckle our seat belts.  Getting through Auckland airport was ridiculously easy and fast - sadly, no one stamps passports anymore.

We rented a car at the airport - I immediately try to get in the wrong side.  So strange with the steering wheel on the right.  It was humorous watching people try to get out of the parking lot.  Damon did a good job driving - we only almost got killed like once or twice.  JK.

We got to our hotel, dropped off our stuff, and went to walk around the city.  We went up in the Sky Tower to get a good look at everything and Damon terrorized a group of Japanese kids by jumping on the glass on the floor they were sitting on - you can see down 60 stories through the glass.

Jet lag started to kick in so we found a coffee shop and sat down to relax.  Within 30 seconds, man sitting by us struck up conversation, which then led an older couple to walk over and start talking to us.  People are very friendly here - although the wife was not a fan of Chicago - apparently she spent three months on a work study program in Chicago over the summer working as a librarian at the Cook County jail and was not impressed.  I mean - Cook County jail as her impression of Chicago???

We were discussing driving on the "wrong" side of the road and the husband told us that (you have to do this in a NZ accent) "oy, we tend to lose a lot tourists out here from the driving".  Apparently 1/5 accidents here involve tourists in car accidents...

Auckland is a harbor city - there is a lot of waterfront and TONS of boats - not sure what the per capita income is, but there is mega yacht after mega yacht after mega yacht.  HUGE boats everywhere.  We even saw the Vodaphone America's Cup boat parked in a slip.

Being in Auckland is not much different from the US - everything is familiar - restaurants (there is even a Denny's here), businesses, stores, even all of our tvs and movies are the same.

After a 3-hour "nap", we went out for dinner - this city wakes up in the evening - had a nice dinner on the water and called it a night.

Off to "Middle Earth" tomorrow to visit the hobbit set.

Tales from the First Class Cabin

Day 1 or Day 2 or it could be night - I have no idea if it is day or night.


Blogging from 34,000 feet while in full recline with my feet up.  There is no other way to say this - travelling in the first class cabin of a 747 is hands down the best way to travel internationally.  Once again, thank you United miles. 


The spoiling began in the airport where we had exclusive people only access to the United First lounge, which is apparently different from a typical United Club.  With marble bathrooms and shower rooms, a full breakfast buffet with everything from sushi to baked goods to a fully stocked open bar, we started the morning off right!  For those of you worried about my clashing outfit in this fancy place, no worries - I substituted my green fleece for a black one, and I'm definitely not the only one rocking yoga pants.  Not much I can do at this point about the pink socks.  They seemed like a good idea a few months ago.

Enter the 747 - a behemoth of a plane.  We were the first to board and like the geeks we are, started taking pictures of everything and pushing all of the buttons on our seat pods.  Damon was very worried by our uncouthness until the other passengers started doing the selfie thing right alongside us.  Our cabin only has 12 seats in it and we are literally in the nose of the plane.  The pilots are two flights above us and behind us.  Very strange.  No clue what the rest of the plane looks like - we really wanted to see the upstairs, but can't figure out where the stairs are. They hand us five page menus, two gift sets (socks, toiletries, eye mask…) each, we each have two big pillows, slippers and a faux down blanket.  Plus a large personal tv filled with movies, games, audio books and more.

Little bit (a LOT) of turbulence in the first few hours.  Nothing more reassuring that having announcements every half hour for the flight attendants to sit down and buckle up when you are in the over nothing but water.  Thank goodness by hour 3 or 4 it was all over and we had a really smooth ride the rest of the time. 

Our first meal (lunch) in the air was an 8 course meal - warm nuts, rolls, sushi plate, egg roll and coconut chicken skewer, soup, salad, filet mignon with gnocchi and asparagus and a make your own ice cream sundae.  Which was awesome right before 2 hours of pretty rough on and off turbulence...  We've had snack baskets and drinks and are awaiting our breakfast in an hour or so. 

I couldn't tell you what time it is - the cabin is "night" - lights have been off for most of the flight and the window shades have been closed the entire trip, but it is daylight outside (I peeked).  I think it is 12:30pm right now in Tokyo and 9:30pm in Chicago.  So far I've watched two movies, read a book and have thoroughly enjoyed lounging with my feet up for the past 9 hours - only 2 hours to go!  I am well hydrated and have probably broken a new bio break record as I should hit six visits to the loo by the time we land.  I'll confess that I like to go there because they have Philosophy brand hydrating spray and it is refreshing to douse my face every hour or two.  Sadly, the first class lav is pretty much the same as any other plane lav, if it had refreshing hydrating spray.

So I describe this experience in such detail not to be snooty, but because I want to remember the sheer bliss of it while it is happening since our Tokyo to Auckland leg will be slightly less luxurious as we join the masses back in economy for the overnight 11 hour leg of this long haul.

Oh yeah, one more interesting tidbit… in first class, they make you wear a shoulder belt in addition to the lap belt for take-off and landing.  Not sure what that is all about - makes me wonder what I'm missing in coach…

Hopefully my next post will not be at 4am when I can't sleep, but only time will tell.

What the heck is a Monkeyhouse???

So we are not even out of the US yet and my very concerned family twice commented on their confusion regarding the title of this Blog - what the heck is "Monkeyhouse"?  So to explain the origin of Monkeyhouse - it is a name we gave our house when the kids were young and VERY present. 

We called all of our previous vacation blogs "Adventures of Monkeyhouse" and so it continues, only without the kids this time.  I mean, heck, it is our very belated honeymoon.  We've had votes to change the Blog to "House of Cards" (took my mom a minute to realize that our last name is Card, we live in a house… get it?).  So feel free to weigh in.  For now, I'm sticking with Monkeyhouse.  Enough on that.

This vacation blog is for the benefit of our friends and family who like to keep track of what we are doing.  Plus it saves us from having to remember all of the details of all of our stories - and of course, it is completely up to you if you want to read instead of us forcing you to listen to our travel tales!  So here we go...

Day 1:

 

I'm sitting in our hotel (thank you Hyatt miles) in San Francisco ready to get on the first leg of our 24 hour journey to Auckland  We will spend just over 11 hours on our way to Tokyo, and  after a short layover, another 11 hours to Auckland.  By far the longest flights I've ever been on, which leads me to a necessary commentary on long distance travel fashion.  Right now I’m looking at my hot pink compression socks, my yoga pants (I am an American) and my bright green fleece - a fashionista I am not, but I aim to be comfortable.  We are lucky enough to have first class seats for the first leg (thank you United miles) but will spend the second leg, which is the overnight leg, in coach - with me in a middle seat.  Sleeping pills and alcohol will hopefully do the trick!

Good-bye haRVey

Our last vacation day... returned haRVey bright and early, the kids and I spent the afternoon poolside at the Mandalay Bay while Damon rouletted his way out of some hard earned cash.  We had some tasty burgers at The Burger Bar, and let Tyler & Damon ride the roller coaster at New York New York.  Finding our way back in to civilization via Las Vegas has been interesting.

In closing, I'd like to leave you with our family generated top ten list from the week:

Top Ten Things we learned about vacationing in an RV

10.  Anything that is not tied down, locked away or sitting in the sink while the RV is moving will, at some point, be flying through the RV.

9.  (Tyler) When spending more than 5 hours at a time in the man cave I must open the curtains before the funk gets too bad.

8.  (Sydney) Sleeping where the dining room table gets set up really sucks around breakfast time

7.  Having a bathroom on board means that Damon is hte weak link when we travel.

6.  (Tyler)  It is harder to pee standing up while moving than I thought.

5.  When the manufacturer sayd 8-10 mpg, they mean downhill with the wind at your back.

4.  Going down switchbacks with a 14% grade in a 31' RV is very different from doing the same thing in a car.  And not in a good way.

3.  Driving through the most glorious scenery in the US does not make teenage texting any less important.

2.  While the back bedroom is the most comfortable place to be while moving, you spend much more time in the air than on the bed.

1.  And the number one thing we learned... getting there truly is half the fun!

Thanks to everyone who followed our blog - we hope you enjoyed our travels!

Dam!

Well the troops are definitely fading but we are still having a good time. Our last RV day was spent in Zion National Park. We parked haRVey on the street and then used the park’s shuttle service to get around. It was an absolutely gorgeous day – warm weather, blue skies, and not a single cloud in the sky. We managed to get the kids onto one short hike to get the best views of the canyon and valley, but as I said, they were fading fast.

Lauren caught a cold but has been a real trooper. We promised she could lie down after our hike, so we headed back to haRVey pretty quickly with a quick stop for smoothies and cinnamon rolls.

For our last destination of this amazing road trip, we headed to the Hoover Dam – during rush hour, on a Friday, of a holiday weekend, following a big car accident, with the RV access road closed – so our 3.5 hour trip turned into about 5 hours when we finally got to the Dam at dusk. We did get to drive over the Dam, twice, so that was exciting. In typical fashion, we only had about 30 minutes before the Dam closed to foot traffic, so after parking haRVey, we ran to the bridge looked over, looked across, took pictures and ran back.

Everyone was starving, so we pulled over into a casino parking lot for a free-for-all dinner of whatever leftovers anyone could get their hands on. We spent the evening packing, quickly realizing that the (8) suitcases we brought to get everything home might not be enough…
We are all sad to be returning haRVey in a few hours, but very excited to spend the day relaxing at the pool at Mandalay Bay before heading home tomorrow.

Check back for one more post tomorrow for our RV top ten list and final thoughts on the trip.

Quote of the Day:
Damon: This damn Dam better be worth it!

We Came, We Saw, Let's Go

Today was a lazy day. We promised the kids they could sleep in this morning since we’ve pretty much been running them ragged, so at promptly 9:00:01, we woke them up to start our day. Got moving around 11 and drove to Bryce National Park – famous for its “hoodoos”. Hoodoos are these amazing pillars that are formed by the wind blowing and shaping sandstone. One is fine, but put thousands of them together and you’ve got yourself a pretty nice photo op.

We made a few stops in Bryce, but at 9,000 feet, the hiking/breathing combination was taking its toll, so we did a lot more of driving to a viewpoint, jumping out, taking pictures, and jumping back in haRVey. It didn’t help that the wind chill felt like it was about 20 degrees and the wind was blowing like crazy.

After Bryce, we had a 2-hour drive to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes. Basically when the wind blows, there is some mystical formula by which really small particles of sand dissolve in the air and really big ones are too heavy to move, but everything in between gets deposited in one area of Utah – it is pretty cool to see these massive “pink” (they are actually light orange) sand dunes in the middle of dessert/canyons. For the most part, the park is for ATVers – we just took a look, ran around a little, baggied up some sand as souvenirs, and left. Probably would have stayed longer, but the wind was really strong (ergo the dunes) and the sand was so fine that particles were getting everywhere.

After leaving the dunes, we should have had a 30 minute drive to Zion but luckily realized that there is a tunnel that haRVey was too big to get through in the park, so we drove about 100 miles through Arizona and Utah to get to the other side of the park and the opposite entrance.
Nice evening in haRVey eating dinner, chilling, and watching a movie. We are now camped in Leeds, UT, waiting to go to Zion tomorrow for our last day in haRVey.

Quote of the Day:
Some random kid in Bryce: Dad, why do you have to take so many pictures of rocks?