First Saturday Back in the Bay

Still behind on posting pictures but it won't take long to catch up.
This next set of pictures was taken on my first Saturday back in the Bay of Plenty (region) where I live.  On the calendar, it was November 9, 2013.  I went down to Pilot Bay where the cruise ships come & go as well as the freighters.  I sat on the grass in the park area along the beach and attempted to take several shots covering nearly a 360 view around me (without a panoramic camera).

Starting behind me on the left is some of the park area, a few trees, and a street - note the guy in the picture, nobody I know, he's just a visual anchor for the overlap on the next shot.

 

Next shot shows there is a cruise ship in today (November 9, 2013).

Pretty big boat!  Next shot starts looking out into the bay.  See the little people on paddle boards?  If I knew how to swim, I'd have to try it.  The boat on the right overlaps with the next photo.

People anchor their pleasure boats in the bay.  There is a bigger, more crowded boat docking area farther in past the cruise ship.  I don't know the rules for who gets to anchor here versus having to anchor in the crowded area.  It's probably a matter of money ;-)

The older boat in the middle above overlaps in the next photo.  The below photo starts to include Mount Maunganui on the right side.

That's the mountain I hike up.  I don't do it often enough, I have been slacking but hopefully I will start again regularly.  If you can see the change in green going up the mountain - that's where the pastureland meets the forested mountain top.  The path I hike goes along that tree line for a while.
The treeline in the above shot overlaps with the next photo which shows the rest of the mountain and brings us back to the beach on my right side.

Marvelous weather for early November.  November is perhaps technically Spring here, but it's hard for me to tell because there are so many months of good weather compared to the US Midwest.  Imagine having weather like this for Thanksgiving (when you don't go away on vacation).

While I enjoyed the view, a freighter came into the bay.  Likely coming in to get a load of lumber, possibly even from my employer.  This next picture is a bit blurry, I tried to get a bit of a close-up showing the freighter in size with its tugboat guide (tugboat near back end of freighter).

The freighter is huge, it can carry a lot of lumber or a lot of freight containers (and you know the containers are big).  Yet, surprisingly, the freighter looks pretty small compared to the cruise ship.

Auckland Airport to Home

This is WAY overdue, but I am finally posting pictures taken along the drive from Auckland airport to Mount Maunganui (where I live). I landed at Auckland airport when I returned from the US in early November 2013.

The drive home from the airport took about 4 hours.  You will see that some of the pictures are similar to what you might see in Wisconsin, but other pictures are definitely not.  You can find areas in the US that look like these pictures, but in some cases you'd have to drive a lot longer than 4 hours to see scenes like these.

Going through a little town...

The town is known for a "fizzy" (soda) drink called "Lemon & Paeroa".  Thus the large bottle of it in town (shown below).  As explained by wikipedia: Lemon & Paeroa, also known as L&P, is a sweet soft drink manufactured in New Zealand.  L&P is traditionally made by combining lemon juice with carbonated mineral water from the town of Paeroa.  It is currently manufactured by Coca-Cola.

And like most towns in the US or New Zealand, you will find a ....

Back to the drive...

We call gas stations "petrol" stations.  The below sign says $2.11 / litre (liter).  There are 3.785 liters to a US gallon, therefore it's nearly $8 / gallon.  Also it is a New Zealand dollar so we have to do the exchange rate - at the current exchange rate, it comes to $6.77 US / US gallon.  Aren't you glad we don't pay this much for gas!  (this is one of the reasons I don't have a car).

Back to the country....

Am I in Wisconsin?

Now this is a windbreak!  The trees are tall but they slice them pretty thin to make this amazing windbreak:

Heading back into the populated areas... in other words getting close to where I live...

That's the Mount across the water in the distance.... almost home...

Up over the bridge...

Last picture of the drive... the harbor and the Mount... just a few minutes from my apartment.

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.