New neighbours

Lovely morning for drinking coffee and mooching around Otaki Beach which is a very West Coast type beach.......lots of stones and rocks, black sand and enough driftwood to rebuild the Ark!  Some of that lovely driftwood found its way into a bag I happened to be carrying.  I'm sure I can create a new garden art feature from it ;)

A lazy drive north to a wee campground that caught my eye just south of Mangaweka.  One or two stops along the way for refreshment on what has been a sticky-hot day.  Meanwhile, back at home in Nelson it's raining, and further west on the coast, they're under threat of some huge rainfall volume.  Fingers crossed damage to person and property is minimised.  It reminds me how fortunate I was to have the unexpected opportunity to head north or I would very likely have been on the West Coast about now :(

As it happens, I'm tucked up here at the Flat hills Cafe campground, which also hosts a variety of farm animals, some of whom I photographed this evening.  If the lettuces outside my van have been munched tomorrow morning it'll be one of these guys I reckon.

In COVID news, there were 142 new cases today and there are 6 people in hospital, 0 in ICU.  The numbers are beginning to rise, as it was predicted they would; today it was announced that the wait-time for boosters will be reduced from 4 months to 3 starting at the end of this week.