Hanmer Springs

There is an AMAZING valley almost 2 hours outside of Christchurch that has a little town called Hanmer Springs in it. I wasn't able to get a shot with the complete panorama but the beautiful snow covered hills were surrounding it with a river winding through the basin and it is more narrow than the Carson Valley, or even Tahoe for that matter. Pretty cool. It is a complete tourist trap which made it slightly less desirable for me, but we still had a blast being tourists there :) The drive was also quite beautiful. We stopped for the shots with the sheep! There were lots of little lambs! It was also cool to finally drive 75mph again!!! It is crazy but these days I hit about 40mph and I feel like I am going fast! The roads are small and driving on the wrong side and the road condition all lead to slow going! Too funny...so Erik and I fit right in...ha ha! So we went up for the day and did a nice hike, had lunch, went to the hot springs which had a couple of water slides Tyler was thrilled about, and then had a nice dinner before the drive home. The craziest part of the day was that they were predicting rain, but we knew it could last through Sunday so we just decided to go and it never did rain until 15 minutes after our dinner! And it was a DOWNPOUR!! So there is a shot of the mountain at 6:50pm and then again swallowed up by clouds and rain at 7:05pm. It was crazy and it worked out perfectly because it poured and then was over with and was dry almost the entire drive back until we got into town. Worked out perfectly!