Saturday, January 26 Wellington

  The campground where we were to stay for several days while we had our Wellington experience and waited for the van to be fixed is about 20 minutes outside of town.  It has a nice camp kitchen for cooking and lounging around, clean bathrooms, and a view over the valley.  And for one day an interesting camperbus owned by an aging surfing couple.  I think we would have bought it on the spot if they had it for sale.

Far out dude.   Those are our three tents all lined up in a row.

    Back in Wellington the next morning we dropped off the van at another mechanic shop for a second estimate, then went to the water to take a look around. Wellington is beautifully situated on a large harbor and surrounded by hills. It was brilliantly clear while we were there, perhaps giving it an unfair advantage over cloudy Auckland, but we were really impressed.

A view of Wellington from the harbor

  We didn't do a lot of exploring that first day because we knew we'd be stuck in the area for a few more days waiting for parts to get the van repaired, so after getting our second repair estimate, we drove up the the large park on Mount Victoria.

Another view from the top of Mount Victoria

    

Peter Jackson used the park on Mount Victoria to shoot several scenes in LOTR.
This passage way was where Frodo and gang saw the Nazgul approaching

The hobbits hid from the Nazgul under a prosthetic tree right here, which is now gone.

Here we recreate the scene where the frightened hobbits run to the ferry to escape
the Nazgul.  We're lucky we didn't fall and break our necks since couldn't
get stunt doubles.

     We drove back into town and went to an art gallery featuring the work of Theodore Geisel. Before J.R.R. Tolkien was tickling our fancy, Dr. Seuss was stretching our imaginations with his revolutionary children's books.

Dr. Seuss's work on display at this gallery

     Finally it was time to go to the theater and watch “The Hobbit”.

Could they look look any better?

Sorry kids, but it just doesn't get any better than this.

Notice how cool Kelly is pushing the shutter button

     It was a rip roaring good film, although the incredible detail of the 3D and the super high frame rate did make it almost like watching a play instead of a movie. Which meant those roles filled by less than stellar actors seemed a bit high schoolish, and the orcs and trolls seemed a bit too real. Kelly and Dan had seen the movie when it first came out. It too was in 3D, and they even saw it in IMAX, but at the normal 24 frames per second. Kelly thought it was more cinematic and less theatric, and vowed never to watch movies at the higher filming speed again. Still, it was a grand experience, and I look forward to the next two installments of the story.

      With visions of Grinches and Hortons and Bilbos and Dwarves (which according to Tolkien is the correct way to spell the plural of Dwarf if referring to the residents of Middle Earth) flitting in our heads, we slept soundly in our tents that night.