#171 Nomad Diary. 26 Jan- 2 Feb 2024. North Island, New Zealand Road Trip Begins: Raglan Beach, Whangarei
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| Lizzy Watching Me Do Morning Yoga |
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| Looking Out At the Rain From Our House Sit House Saturday. 27. It’s raining today. We stayed in enjoying our slowish morning. Darrell has computer work on his blog for Bible questions and answers mainly from preachers and others in Kenya. It’s at www.knowyourbible.org We cooked our meals today and decided on a grocery list to include getting the ingredients for food we will take to the church luncheon tomorrow. Darrell came up with Pinwheels that he wants to make. He researched all kinds of recipes online and we discussed some of the different ways to make them and what flavor we were going for. I told him that there are fresh chives in the garden that he could use. The fresh chives, parsley and garlic all were fabulous and tasted really good mixed into the cream cheese and sour cream mixture. We bought a few items at the grocery. I made some gluten free brownies and some date balls with almond flour (known as Bliss Balls in New Zealand!). I made chicken soup for dinner. Darrell made the cream cheese mix for the Pinwheels and the assembly of them tomorrow. We played a round of cards. We play a set of Gin and then a set of Gin Rummy with slightly different rules. Sunday. 28. It’s raining hard all afternoon today! We had a big breakfast this morning. Darrell assembled his Pinwheels with flour tortillas, cream cheese mixed with fresh spices and sour cream, shredded Edam cheese, deli meat, lettuce and thin sliced cucumbers, carrots, pickles and olives. We put them rolled up into a box for the cooler, and cut them at lunchtime. After worship we all had lunch together and enjoyed talking to several people who we have been getting to know over this month. |
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| Beach Stop Along the Highway North of Three Sisters and New Plymouth, West Coast North Island New Zealand |
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| Raglan Beach Cottage Bedroom |
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| Evening Beach Walk at Raglan Monday. 29. Tuesday. 30. Today is moving day. We left our month long house sit for a 3 hour drive to Raglan. We stopped at Chris and Michelle’s and closest neighbor and friend, Leisha’s place about an hour north of New Plymouth near Three Sisters. They had invited us to stop for coffee and we did. Summer, Michelle’s daughter, had made a carrot cake to share with us too! Sahara, Leisha’s daughter, made a chocolate krispie that we also enjoyed with the best cup of coffee brewed up by Chris. Michelle told us about a good restaurant, Fat Pigeon, to stop for lunch which we did. We arrived to our beach front airbnb and moved in. We had to deal with some ants and some wasps, but everything else was wonderful. We relaxed into our stay easily. |
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| Raglan Beach Sunset |
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| Street in Raglan |
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| A Wind Surfer Taking to the Water in Raglan Wednesday. 31. We walked to town along the beach during mid-morning. The sun is high and hot. Darrell wasn’t feeling great and really pushed himself to make the 40 minute walk. While we were in town, we walked about another 30 minutes to a pier to a fish place for lunch. We met a family from North Dakota! That was funny and odd! Stuff like this happens here. It’s a funny and weird country at times. We walked back through town toward our house. Darrell was dragging but kept going and then just layed down for the rest of the today and the next day too. Thursday. 1. Darrell laid on the couch and slept all day. He was just trying to recover from whatever illness took him. He sneezed and blew his nose, slept, ate light and drank fluids. I drove to the grocery and was also looking for aspirin. I found out that aspirin is all sold out and is out of stock and not likely to find it here! Weird for us because aspirin is such a standard product in the US. We were able to take a short evening beach walk and watch the wind surfers in the water from our living room window. |
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| View of Our Whangarei Airbnb From the Garden |
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| In the Backyard of Our Airbnb. Downhill 3 Pastures and Through the Woods to This Wow! |
Friday. 2. Today is moving day. Darrell is recovered enough to drive the 4-5 hours to Whangarei. We arrived around 3pm and moved in. Met our host and she let us know about the waterfall down the hill in their back yard. We walked down and enjoyed that.
Nomad Notes. Traveling while sick is tiring. Since being Nomads since selling our house in September 2020 we have had to deal with a few times of sickness and injury. Most of what I remember, we have had fairly short travel days and times where we are staying enough nights to rest up and recover.
I’ve gotten the question: Do you ever get tired of this kind of nomad life? My answer is that I get tired. I haven’t gotten tired of being a nomad yet. Darrell hasn’t gotten tired of being a nomad yet. We have an agreement from the beginning of our plan that when one of us wants to change out and go back to living in one location, then we can do that.
So getting tired happens whether you live in one location or whether you move around. Pacing and rest are aspects of our response to traveling and moving.
We have planned our North Island road trip with mostly 3 night stays. As I’m writing this on February 6th, we are on our 3rd stay. We have felt more relaxed on having 3 nights to rest and tour in our area. We have time to hang out at our house, do laundry, cook meals, and explore locally.
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