A night in the tent did wonders for our cabin fever, yet very little for our general posture and tiredness. Turns out the tent was on a very subtle slope. As I continuously slid into Bridget in the night, she continuously prodded me awake, annoyed at being crushed into the side of the tent. But it was worth a small taste of headroom, and ‘tent night’ might have to become a regular thing if but to keep us sane. On exiting the tent I noticed the distant clouds had dissipated, revealing snow-capped mountains right there on our doorstep. They do exist.
We were heading back along Arthur’s Pass to wind up in Ashburton, so we wanted to take as much of a detour as we could. There really is only one road to take, but we noticed a side road leading to Lake Brunner. And so, after the morning routine, we headed back up SH6. My atlas had told of a sealed road to the lake, however this was not the case. It didn’t matter, as it was not a bad dirt road by any means, but I am starting to get a little disappointed in my atlas and it’s consistent errors. Lake Brunner is quite a large, and rather nice lake. We parked at a boat ramp and wandered along a board walk that happened to be there. This took us some way around the lake, we didn’t walk it in it’s entirety, and provided many photo opportunities of things such as logs protruding from the lake and misshapen trees. One photo of a dragonfly perched on some grass, spotted by Bridget but taken by me, I am particularly proud of, and may sell to Microsoft as the default desktop background for ‘Windows Dragonfly’ (This is not an actual working title for any Microsoft software, but once they see the photo, they would be fools not to adopt the name).
The drive back through Arthur’s Pass was pretty much the same as the day before. No, I would go as far as to say it was identical yet seen in reverse. Maybe not that far actually, since there was one minor difference. Soon after entering the National Park, we came across the oddest roadworker I’ve ever witnessed. It was a female. But not just a female, but a girl. A girl with bleach-blonde hair, big sunglasses and equally big, impractical earrings. Standing there in a high-vis vest straddling a stop/go sign, it all seemed a bit strip-club. And before you label me chauvinistic, it was actually Bridget that first realised that made that little comparison. I merely welcomed the mental image. But that wasn’t the minor difference that made this return trip different. It would seem that due to the low cloud experienced throughout the previous trip I had sold Arthur’s Pass National Park short on the matter of snow-capped mountains. Right at the beginning, which would be yesterday’s end, there was a rather magnificent snow-capped mountain just to the left, yesterday’s right, of SH73. I marvelled at its beauty while parked on the side of the road topping up the brake-fluid in my truck. See we are currently driving with severely diminished front brake pads, giving the aural impression that we have angle-grinders instead of windows. This is causing the brake fluid to be used up as the Hilux desperately tries to compensate. We will need to get the brake pads replaced in Ashburton, something I should have done while back in Auckland, but things that do not fit into my budget I will try my hardest to ignore for as long as safely possible.
Lunch was intended to be in Arthur’s Pass village, however after a quick toilet stop in which the hand dryer sounded like it was going to saw my hand off, wee thought it would be nicer to find a rest stop further down the road. This turned out to be Klondyke Corner DOC campground, which is still in the National Park so Palin was only able to have a quick walk on the lead, then had to be put back in the car. As we prepared our lunch we were attacked by the infamous South Island bugs for the first time. The insect repellent did little to deter them, but a few suffered a much deserved end by my hand. There was no need to stay much longer than it took to wolf down lunch, and probably a few bugs with it, so we moved on to Cave Stream Scenic Reserve again. Unfortunately we did not go caving as we weakly promised ourselves the day before. Had I packed a wetsuit I would have dived right in, but I didn’t, so I didn’t. Instead we disobeyed the no dogs sign that we missed the day before and let Palin out to have a run around, and more importantly to go to the toilet. His continuous, nauseating release of gas for pretty much the entire length of Arthur’s Pass National Park was enough to make us break the rules with pleasure.
From here it was a non-stop drive back to SH1 to revisit Burnham in order to locate the tearooms we had missed two days before. However, when we got there we found no tearooms. In fact, we found no Burnham. We drove as far north as Rolleston, self-proclaimed “Town of the Future”, which we figured out means there is no town at present, but no sign of Burnham or their tearooms. The township mustn’t be on SH1, and therefore whether or not the Burnham Tearooms exist is beyond the scope of this journey. Luckily we hadn’t detoured too far to get there, and it did mean we could revisit Meads Tearooms when it was open. I’m glad we did too, because they are the finest, most tearoomish tearooms yet. None of the extra junk that so many other places tag on. Just tearooms.
We arrived in Ashburton not long after that, and drove first to a garage to see if they could replace my brake pads before I left the following day. I was told to come back first thing the following morning, which suited me to the ground. So we found a campground that would accept Palin, Carnival Park Holiday Park, and set up camp. We’re back sleeping in the truck tonight. In some ways I miss it, even after only one night. It’s where my heart is I suppose.
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