Saturday, December 24, 2022.

It felt a little bit like Christmas Eve, we could see snow on the glaciers!

We had signed up for an excursion to go out on Lake Tasmin to see the icebergs and the leading edge of the retreating Tasmin Glacier. I was shocked to learn that Lake Tasmin did not exist when we were at Mt. Cook 49 years ago. At that time the leading edge of the glacier was all the way up to where we got in our boat for our ride.

After our boat ride, we had lunch at the Hermitage hotel then we drove to Queenstown. I did not like driving on the gorge road outside Queenstown. Very twisty with dizzying views straight down to the River below. I went slowly along, pulling over when I could to let the cars behind me go by.

We pulled into the Riverview campsite in Queenstown, and it was different from our previous campsite. Basically it was a parking lot with no view. The bathrooms and kitchen were nice. Lucy loved doing the I fly experience just down the street from our campsite.