It’s Nearly Departure Time!

Bags are nearly packed and last minute errands nearly done. KAT youth have rehearsed their songs and reviewed their lines.

Traveling from East to West

Finally I connect to the Internet! It’s Tuesday morning in New Zealand, but only Monday afternoon back home. We’ve had such an adventure already. Air travel was fairly uneventful but very LONG. Our connection in Chicago went smoothly and our 5 hour layover in Los Angeles allowed us time to have dinner and stretch our legs before the 12 hour flight across the Pacific.

Rick and I took Kelsey, Courtney, and Dana to the “Encounter” restaurant at LAX for dinner. It’s the odd shaped, sort of outer space looking building at LAX. We had a very tasty light dinner and the girls got a nice view of the airport area and the mountains beyond.

They served dinner on the plane and after a few hours of flight, we found ourselves pretty bored.... leading Rick to start a silly thing with a finger puppet.... then the girls took up the cause... below is their "family photo."

Sleeping on the plane through the night was as one would expect… a bit difficult to accomplish! But most of our group enjoyed at least a few hours here and there. They served some good tasting dinner and then woke us up 2 hours before landing with a nice breakfast. We saw the sunrise as we approached New Zealand.

After flying into Auckland . Stop at Matamata (aka Hobbiton) to tour the farm where that part of Lord of the Rings was filmed, then lunch at "Workman's Cafe" . Check into Millenium Hotel . Dinner in Rotorua

Visiting the Shire

The Shire is known to all who’ve seen or read “The Lord of the Rings” as the place where Hobbits live happily. After the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed here in New Zealand, the town of Matamata unofficially adopted the name “Hobbiton.” This is where you can see the film location for all of the scenes from the Shire.

Hobbiton was wonderful to see! It rained pretty hard part way through our tour of ‘the shire’ property, which is a working sheep farm. We were all taken away with the magic of being ‘in the shire.’ Our guide told all sorts of stories about filming. It was interesting to hear how the property owners and all others involved had to sign non-disclosure contracts so that they wouldn’t talk about what was being filmed on the property till months afterwards!

When we first arrived in Hobbiton, there was only a light misty intermittent rain. We first pulled up to a hilltop to look over the valley below and see the whole area where the film was made. No rain yet. Then we went to the area near the big “party tree” which was really a huge tree near a small lake (large pond) area. At that point, the rain started falling and we all grabbed umbrellas, but kept walking up and down the hills. Some folks fell and got mud all over their jeans, camera, etc.

As we started climbing the hilly area where all the hobbit holes were, it really started raining hard. And then someone else fell and again it was a muddy jeans and camera situation. The tricky part was to keep avoiding stepping into or falling into the small little sheep turds that were pretty much all over the shire!

We went up the hill and into Bilbo Baggins’ home. That was the only Hobbit house we were actually able to walk into. All of the other hobbit holes were really just facades, not actual homes that you could walk into. Bilbo’s home was big enough for all of our group of 40 to fit into. And it was really something, to imagine actually being in Bilbo’s home as it appears in the movie! Imagination takes over and one thinks Gandalf is going to walk into the room next.

After leaving the shire, we had lunch at “Workman’s Cafe” in Matamata, which served really incredible food. I had the “veggie fritter” with green salad. The fritter was very delicious, with corn, sweet potatoes, and other veggies all mixed in and fried like a pancake. It was served with a little clotted cream on top. Yumm!