There's No Place Like Home ... Unless It's The Bus.

We had mixed emotions as we left Nelson to start life on the road for the second time. But hey, we're going back for seconds so that must say a lot about this lifestyle.

Why mixed emotions? I guess, there's a couple of reasons. Even though we intend to return to Nelson often for visits, we'll miss being near family. And, for the next few months Bernie and I will be apart for several days each week because I have part-time work back in Nelson and want to be around for Becs and our new granddaughter, Mikah. So I'll pop backwards and forwards and Bern with come back during his days off. We're going to play it be ear for the first few months.

It was raining when we arrived in Blenheim. It didn't bother the dogs having to stay indoors, they kept themselves entertained perched on the couch staring out the window.

And in keeping with our tradition I picked some wildflowers to have in the bus. 

The diesel heater kicked into gear that night and we were toasty warm. The next morning the sun was shining and it felt like a summer's day. Bernie left early for work, and I took the dogs to the Wairau Diversion Reserve. I won't go into detail about the reserve as I have written a separate post on it, which you can read by clicking here.

The next morning I woke to a pinky glow, so I threw on my trackpants, jumped into my gumboots and set off to get some sunrise photos.

With little to no breeze the Wairau River was like a mirror.

Walking back to the bus, I made a slight detour to skirt around some sheep having an early breakfast.

In the photo below, you'll see some smoke drifting up behind the tractor (to the left of our bus). From the direction of the smoke, a voice called out to me, asking what I was doing up at this hour. Haha, I could have asked the same thing. It was Winston the owner of the place where we're staying. He was cooking his breakfast, while whitebaiting. What a great life!

Once I got back into the bus, I couldn't resist snuggling back into bed. After all, it was Sunday, the sun was barely up and ohhhh that bed looked so warm and cosy!