After spending a couple of days at Mum & Brian’s house, where we had quality time with the fam and got some basics for the van, we were going on an adventure!

Just the two of us, heading towards the place where the scene in that GIF was filmed: Hobbiton. Then on to Rotorua for the night.

An interactive map of our route (with the origin vague for privacy):

We stopped at McLaren Falls for a second breakfast, crossing a one lane bridge:

The van parked; it fit in a normal spot fairly well:

Second breakfast at the Falls Cafe:

Scones and flat white coffees (of course; that’s the only style of coffee we had the entire trip):

McLaren Falls Park looks like a nice park, but no time to explore it; we had places to be:

The falls:

Heading downhill:

Arriving at Hobbiton, with (of course) lots of camper parking:

Sausage roll and coffee for lunch:

Hobbiton selfie:

I feel that Hobbiton deserves its own post, so I’ll do that tomorrow.

Sheep when leaving Hobbiton:

Corrugated iron sheep in Tirau:

Tree tunnel:

Arriving at our first campground of the trip, Willowhaven Holiday Park:

Campground map; we were in site 3 (but not tent site 3 or cabin 3; their map is a little confusing):

Lakefront view from our site:

We just stopped there to register before the office closed, then headed out again, towards Rotorua. Past the home of Zorbing:

You can tell that Rotorua is a major tourist town when even the grocery store has camper parking:

Grocery shopping:

Then we headed to Polynesian Spa for a relaxing soak:

We enjoyed a private lakefront thermal pool:

Afterwards, we had a lavish charcuterie platter and fruit smoothies for dinner:

Then back to our lakefront site:

I hadn’t mounted the Starlink dish on the roof yet, so I placed it in front of our site:

It was a great day. I’ll post about the Hobbiton stop tomorrow. Before that, stay tuned for a timelapse video of our travels; I will have a video on the same day as each travel post.