Posted in travel on 09/01/2004 09:34 pm by Tam
Well, Stephen is off to his Florida side-trip. There’s apparently a category 4 hurricane on the way — hopefully this won’t have any affect on us, our travel plans, or the already-had-enough-thank-you-very-much people of Florida beside maybe dropping a little more rain.
Still hot and muggy here. I need to find a good lot full of kudzu to photograph for folks back in NZ. We’ve seen plenty, but they’ve mostly been along highways — not so good for stopping and snapping pics.
Mom and I are planning to visit an alpaca farm tomorrow. I can’t imagine being covered in wool in all this heat.
Posted in travel on 09/01/2004 02:18 am by Tam
It’s 31 degrees (86 or so), and humid as heck. We went to a park and did a bit of walking around a lake, but it was just too warm to do much more than stroll a few hundred meters. I’m wearing short sleeves and NO SOCKS, nevermind my ubiquitous gloves.
“Cry me a river,” say our Wellington friends, where it was apparently 3 degrees (37) this morning.
Having gotten more or less used to what parks look like in NZ — all the trees and weeds and bugs — today’s walk was a weird juxtaposition of familiar/alien.
Also familiar and alien are the endless strip malls and subdivisions. Mom remarked sadly on how the road we took today, named “Scenic Highway”, got its name because at one point it actually *was*. Half the roads and towns down here have pretty, evocative names that once upon a time hadn’t the faintest whiff of irony to them: “Rosebud Road”, “Flowery Branch”, “Tribble Mill Road”… I found my eyes sorting all the houses and lots carefully, combing through them for the old farm houses still tucked here and there. I wish I could show this to every New Zealander and just *shake* them. “This ! This is where you’ll end up if you don’t pay attention !“