October = USA

I went home (USA) in October for vacation.  In New Zealand they don't call it vacation, they call it 'holiday'.

Flight landed in L.A. and I rented a car from there.  After a long drive and a wonderful visit with Dawn & family, I crossed into Wisconsin.  At my usual Exit#1 gas stop, I took this picture.  You can't really tell but the white SUV has an Illinois plate and a trailer hitch with a Green Bay Packer emblem :-)

Near Wisconsin Rapids, the kids wanted to get out and stretch at Nepco Lake County Park:

 

When we got home, there was a re-union with the Pink Bunny.

 

I didn't take many pictures of my vacation other than when I took dad to the Monday night NFL game (Green Bay Packers vs Chicago Bears) November 4th.   I didn't get to see #12 play much as that is the night he broke his collar bone.  We lost, but it was still a great game to see.

We got to the game quite early and got a really close parking spot ($30 to the Lions club (charity)).

It didn't take long to get into the stadium and Clay was waiting to greet us ;-)

Once we got up to the indoor suites, this was the view we had from our seats (an hour+ before game time).

I went down to the glass, looked back and took a couple of pictures of dad.  It was theater seating so there wasn't any problem seeing everything and the seats were very comfortable, and it was heated indoor seating!!

 

This was the view while standing at the glass (no partition dividers when you are closer):
straight ahead:

look left.

 look right.

From our seats, if we walked around to the end zone toward our left, we could go up one level and stand at an outside deck area.  I went to the deck and took a few pics before the game.  This one is looking out at the south end zone with the newly built levels.

more down at the bowl:

straight down from the deck:

and straight up from the deck at the north end zone big screen (just like south end zone but I was so close).  If you look closely at the top of this picture, you can see it was 66:28 minutes to go before kick-off:

This is a look out at the parking lot from our level.  This is still an hour+ before game time.  The immediate (stadium) parking lot looks rather empty because those are reserved spots for season ticket holders.  Season ticket holders don't have to rush to get parking ;-)

And I am back at my seat, next to dad.  Here is a picture from our seats. You can see a few players on the field warming up:

These are the seats to my right, which surprisingly stayed empty the entire game.  That was because if you look toward the top of the picture, the seat-holders spent the entire game watching from the atrium area.  They were standing around some tall tables where they shared food and drink (they had to purchase the food/drink, we were not sitting in the suites w/ included food/drink, that's really expensive!).

Now let's get to the GAME !!!
Warm-ups:

Players being announced at Game-Time:

The National Anthem:

One of the early plays:

During commercial-break, the Tundra DrumLine at work (in the lower left corner of the field):

If you couldn't see it well enough, just look at the TV hanging above us to the right:

Although we could not see an end zone screen from our seats, we had a couple of TVs in the suite area to watch replays.  There was a TV up front near the left of the suite:

Directly in front of us (to the right of that hanging TV) are 2 speakers (black boxes) through which they brought us the radio broadcast of the game, and looking a bit to the right is the other TV near the ceiling:

When it was over, the stadium quickly emptied:

Time to go home:

Although Moosie and LB stayed in the car during the game, they were exhausted when we got home.

Up the Mount w/ the kids

My "kids" were bugging me to go up the mount, so here are some pictures of them enjoying the hike.

Hide 'n seek time.

LB (Little Bear) deciding which way to take to the top.

A view of the mountain from down on the walkway by the main beach.

It was a sunny day.  Two people on a log on the beach.  Yes, that bump on the log is 2 people sitting together.

A couple of pictures from walking around the mountain.

Some boats near the beach.

There are fences around the mountain to keep the sheep in pastures.  This next picture shows a smart idea for getting over the fences.  Looks much easier than having to crawl under or through the fence.

And finally, a freighter going around the mountain out to sea, full of logs.

You get an idea of how big those freighters are by comparing them to the speed boats in this next shot.  Yes, those freighters are huge!

That's it for now.   Cruise ship season is around the corner so more of those pictures to come.

Houses and more Houses

I took these pictures back in April.  My apologies for the posting delay.

There seems to be much more freedom or leniency in building codes in New Zealand.  Check out these house pictures I took in my neighborhood.  These are all in the same suburb.

Lots of homes have garages, but just as many do not.  Of those with attached garages, a good number have converted the garage into another room of the house, perhaps a bedroom, a sunroom, or an exercise room.  Since the weather here is nice year-round, a garage is not really needed.

This house looks like it has a converted garage.

This house either doesn't have a garage or it is now behind the wall and part of their home.  Good thing they live on a corner which gives them more grass to park on (very common here).

Around the corner, the house looks like this, and it is just down the street from the main drag.  The main drag is about 1 block down this road.  On the very left of this picture is the edge of the house in the above picture.

A good number of places have actual driveways but a lot of places do not so they just drive on the grass as you can see here:

Next is the campground at the base of Mount Maunganui (the mountain I hike quite a bit).

Around the corner and just down the street along the beach things get more upscale.

 

Below is another small house downtown.  Yes, of course they have satellite TV here.

This place looks like at least one garage space became a room added to the house.

A single family home down the street:

Next to something larger and more unique...

This older home is pretty much smack-dab in the middle of downtown with a relatively decent yard size.  It is for sale and I think the sale price is close to a million.  Surprising but on an island, space is precious.

A few more places around town:

Because I live in a holiday / resort town (heck a holiday island!), a lot of places are rentals for either long term or short term vacations.

And we close with a couple more nice looking places...

 

 

A lot of variety here in New Zealand.