Camping 2012- 2013

This year we took on Mum and Dads old caravan as a project!! turned out to be quite a bigger project than expected....The floor was rotten in parts so John totally gutted the old girl and re floored, re plumbed,painted and all the electrical stuff updated to safety standards!!! I made new curtains and loaded her up to go on it's first ever family holiday...this caravan had never gone far in its life...from CHCH to Akaroa to Le Bons to Akaroa and then to Le Bons for over 20 years of doing not much...so for a 1973ish caravan this really was her first Holiday.....We went to Frans on Xmas eve for the night and spent xmas day at their place with Mum and Dad and Carmen and Waz and Family and Frannie and P and family...lovely day had by all...Allie and co were in Aussie this xmas.

On Boxing day we traveled down to Geraldine and stayed at Grumpys retreat...at first glance we thought it wasn't quite the right spot for us but as we had booked felt we had better make the most of it as going anywhere else and expecting to get a booking would have been impossible! It was the old school just out of Geraldine...anyway it had great clean facilities and was safe for the kids,. We made the most of having a base there and spent our days touring around...Jade and Hayley came for 4 nights .Fran and Paula and the kids came for a day, as did Brian and Sandra, Pam and Tim and Nan and Ellie and Freya....we had absolutely crazy weather and it rained every day at some stage of the day!!! Major rain a couple of times and some mighty thunder!!! We loved heading up to Te Mona Gorge and swimming in a lovely roadside pool.All in all a great crazy weather holiday!! All fun until on the way home the wheel fell off the caravan on the Motokorara turn off!! Was very stressful as we were close to the intersection and had the caravan stuck on the road for about 2 hours...Good old John sorted it out eventually, but we did have to leave it in a paddock until the start of the week when John could go into town and get a new wheel rim...