found it!

I sort of woke up this morning when Ann was leaving, then fell back asleep until a more reasonable hour. I got in a couple of hours of electrical outlet use before check-out time, then began driving back up toward the Bay of Islands. I stopped at the Canterbury store in Whangarei and picked up some shorts, board shorts and a nice big navy tote/gym back that looks like it’ll be useful for sailing. I also stopped by AA and got some maps I was missing, including one for Northland, and decided to try to find the campsite near Tutukaka that Ann and I couldn’t find the other day.

I drove all the way back down the gravel road we took on Sunday night, following the DOC directions to the letter, and again found myself stopping the car suddenly as the road disappeared into the water. I turned around, pulled over, and got out the map, looking for the name of road the campsite was on – the final piece of the DOC directions, which we never managed to reach since we hit a dead end first. I found the road on the map, then realized that if the final road name was right, all of the other directions leading up to it were completely wrong. Hoping that the road name was at least correct, I picked out a route on the map and drove there – and finally found the elusive campsite, nearly 30km from where the directions landed us!

At the site, I did some final reorganization of the car, and pulled out the stuff to do an oil change…then discovered that the ‘all-in-one; adjustable pipe wrench I bought for the filter and drain plug was too ‘strong’ for the drain plug – the plug was frozen, so the ridges in the wrench were starting to strip the nut on the outside of the plug…so the plan was aborted once again. I know they’ll have a lot of tools at the boatyard, though, so I’ll just do it there. Next project was reading about fly fishing and trying to set up my new rod. I made it through one book, but unfortunately it was just tips and not instruction, so didn’t get the rod set up yet.

After dinner, I sorted through some pictures on the computer, read for a bit, then went to sleep.