Fiordland --> Wanaka via Wine Country

After Fiordland's rains chased us out, we headed back up through Queenstown towards Wanaka, our next stop.  After some white-knuckle rainy day/curvy road driving, we caught some pretty sights along the way, including some amazing fall colors and cool clouds:

We stopped at a couple wineries outside Queenstown for a quick tasting.  Mmm... wine.  We tried Amisfield and Peregrine, both tasty.

The crazy clouds and rainstorms were following us:

But that led to some cool rainbows!:

We stopped at the Roaring Meg dam on the Kawarau River, because, well, duh:

MOAR RAINBOWS!
(that Tim couldn't look at because he was driving. On the left.):

More crazy rain clouds stalking us!:

And then we reached our campsite for the night, the lovely Wanaka Lake Outlet, on the edge of Wanaka (down a seriously long gravel road):

Fiordland: Gertrude Valley Hike

In the afernoon, after our Milford Sound cruise, we decided to do a quick hike into nearby (just on the other side of the tunnel) Gertrude Valley before setting up camp for the night (i.e. parking the van).  When we started our hike, it was grey but not rainy:

As we hiked, however, the clouds started rolling in and literally surrounding us... here they come:

Even my phone started getting fogged from all the moisture, making selfies difficult (god forbid):

Gertrude Valley is a pretty hike... we intended to make it up the saddle for some purportedly lovely views, but the rain and clouds put a damper on those plans:

The clouds were out to get us:

Aren't the clouds crazy? So low-hanging... It was super neat to see how they filled up the valley so quickly.  

Less super neat: how soaked we got and how unable we were to dry out afterwards in the camper van.  It poured all night!!  The rain stopped us from doing another hike on our agenda the following morning, the Key Summit Track.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some.  At least we got to have a fresh and tasty pie back at Miles Better Pies in Te Anau (thanks for the tip, Colleen and Scuba Steve!).

Gah, where did we park the van??

Dramatic clouds... that pretty much sums up our fiordland experience!

Fiordland: Mirror Lakes, Cascade Creek Nature Walk, Homer Tunnel

After our night at DOC's Henry Creek campsite, we kept heading up Route 94/Milford Road with the ultimate destination of Milford Sound, where we planned to take a boat ride to check out the fiord.

We made a couple stops along the way, though.

First we just pulled to the side of the road for this pretty valley view:

And to take photos of this crazy fog/low lying cloud blanketing the valley floor:

The we popped over to the Mirror Lakes viewpoint (DOC calls it a walk, but it barely constitutes a walk in my mind), which has a cool reflective views of the Earl Mountains:

After that, we popped by the Lake Gunn nature walk, because we hadn't had enough moss and ferns the day before...  Tim did some bird watching:

It was extra mossy here... sometimes the moss-covered downed trees started to look like a menagerie of weird green animals:

Macro moss shot:

Lake Gunn:

Sunny selfie:

As we continued driving up towards Milford Sound, there were countless viewpoints for looking around... here's one:

At some points we were just surrounded by clouds:

After these stops, it was time to tackle the Homer Tunnel, which is quite a creepy one-way tunnel through the mountain on the only road to the Milford Sound.  It was dark, wet, and claustrophia-inducing, for sure:

After the tunnel, we were pretty much at Milford Sound... more on that coming soon!