Day 4 – Oamaru to Mt. Cook

We headed out early this morning, destined for Mt. Cook National Park. There was one minor detour before actually hitting the road…a visit to the Edmonton Cheese Factory. This cheese factory was not creepy like the other one. The cast of Scrubs flies out the owner once a year to bring them all cheese. There are signed autographs from the cast all over the place. Their cheese was outstanding! The best part was we had CHEESEcake for Breakfast!!!! Homemade berry cheesecake! We left with a bag full of cheese too.

The drive to Mt. Cook went through lots of farmland and gradually entered the mountains. We used up almost all of our gas driving into a headwind up mountains for 3-1/2 hours. The first view of Mt. Cook through the windshield was pretty stunning. It’s hard to believe how HUGE it is. The Tasman glacier is next to it and when we got into the small village at the base of the mountain, you could actually see the blue ice of the glacier.

The weather was getting sketchy and the winds were high, so we did a short 1-hour hike that was described as “a delightful stroll with a slight incline.” Maybe they rank their trails different here, but the slight incline was tough enough to definitely burn off the cheesecake calories from breakfast.

We got settled into the campsite and then walked through the forest with laptops in hand to get online. How odd is that? Anyway, the winds are really blowing right now and I’m afraid sleeping in the camper tonight will feel like I’m in a boat on the high seas.