Campgrounds | Bugger It, we are off – www.buggeritweareoff.com

We are still waiting for a tenant for the house but it has only been just over a week. Rome wasn’t built in a day as they say.

We’re really looking forward to heading south in a couple of weeks time. Here’s another great recent trip in the meantime.

Late in July, we arranged to meet friends at a NZMCA rally being held at kai Iwi lakes .. somewhere I’ve have never been to before north of Dargaville on the coast. We left Auckland on a Saturday morning and arrived there just after midday.. its a good 2.5 – 3 hr run.

There were a lot of vans and a lot more of them were European Motorhomes than the traditional bus conversions that we’ve seen at these events. A really interesting place and another well organised event by the Northland NZMCA crew. Along with meeting our friends from Snells Beach, we met many Dethleffs van owners, some who have travelled quite some distance to be part of the fun.
Remember to click on the images to enlarge them.

There aren’t many DOC camps around the Auckland region and on the way home, we were keen to try the Trounson Kauri park which is just up the road (15k’s or so) towards Waipoua Forest . .. somewhere else we’d never been to.

After plugging in to the power and settling down, we were off to explore the park. It is really nicely set up .. a boardwalk stretches through the whole length of the forest. Amazing huge Kauri Trees mixed with new growth.. It’s very clean and an easy 1/2 hour walk through the whole park. Well worth doing.

And I took one of her :-) — And I took one of her 🙂

Just to prove that I did the walk, Fiona took this cell phone picky. — Just to prove that I did the walk, Fiona took this cell phone piccy

We got back to the van and settled down in front of the heater to warm up with a glass of something cold .. This must be one of the few DOC parks with power. Several vans of nice French tourists arrived just before dark which was good.
There is also a building with a hot shower and kitchen facilities and nice clean toilets.
The walk was fantastic and its a great spot for a night in your Motorhome.

As the posts here are a bit infrequent at the moment, if you click Follow at the bottom, you’ll be notified of a new post to save you checking in. 🙂

Saturday was a big day… starting with launching my old ex Whalechaser now being looked after by my sons after they’ve literally repainted the whole thing.
Click on the photos to enlarge

After parking her in the berth, we were off in Rafe to the Grandkids in Ardmore to babysit. I’m always very careful going up their 1/2 k odd long driveway as the trees and shrubs at the gateway lining it grow like weeds and reach out to try and scratch Rafe. Alex and Sarah had given them a good haircut so all good.

After a good night parked in the corner, we woke up to the family tradition on Fathers Day of chocolate fish.. yum first thing in the morning 🙂
After a cup of coffee and breakfast, we both felt that a hot swim might be the order of the day and neither of us being ready to go home, so we thought a decent drive, Te Aroha hot pools, 120 odd K away.

Rather than go the way we always go, via Maugataroto, we thought we’d try down State Highway 1 on the motorway and turn off at Ohinewai through to Tahuna. What a great run too apart from taking a wrong turn and adding 15 minutes or so to the trip.. no harm done.
Checking in to the Te Aroha Holiday Park, just on the South Side of the Town itself was easy. $34 for the two of us with the NZMCA discount.. what a classic place. All the cabins are ex workingmens huts. In really good nick too.

Click on the photos to Enlarge

Nice big parks

The kids adventure playground. Working phone and Kitchen/Laundry

Cabins and Adventure playgound

Amazing 50’s working mans huts as cabins

Our first use of the new Clothesline

Mt Te Aroha behind

Reading through Rankers and Wikicamps, some of the comments are awful and the place didn’t deserve the bad rap that it had. One of the comments was that the hot pools didn’t have any water in them, .. my first question when I checked in .. after that it was all good.
There was a really nice pool complex too. The pools weren’t ready until after 6 and it was dark by then so no photos.
Huge parking spaces and nicely separated off by hedges and plants. Well placed and easy to get to Dump Station too. A nice place to stay.

Fiona & Chris, two empty nesters put their dreams of doing something different into reality… Now back in a house, they were living in their Motorhome, come along for the ride.