New Zealand's National Parks!

This morning we relaxed at our locale by the river, and Jon went for a run, before refilling our water, going to the dump station, and getting ready to head out of town. We left around 10 to head to Wanganui National Park which lies along the Wanganui River. We drove through the national park for about 3 hours, around crazy twists and turns and through some beautiful scenery, taking lots of videos on our GoPro :).

At one point, with the windows down, ittttt kinda smelled pretty bad. We weren't really sure what was going on...butttttt it smelled awful. And we were semi-afraid it was coming from our bathroom. But alas, THANKFULLY it was not. It was coming from...THE SHEEP!! They smell SO BAD. Words can't even describe how awful they smell! We were so grateful it wasn't coming from inside the van (that sounds like a horror movie) and were quite glad that we could close some of the windows to get away from the stench!!!

After our travels through Wanganui National Park, we made our way over to Tongariro National Park, which is about 10 km away from Wanganui. While there, we were able to grab 15 minutes of free wi-fi from the visitor's center before heading down the Tongariro Trek, a 2 hour hiking trail which led to the beautiful Tongariro Falls :)

I had been slightly afraid of cold weather on the trail for two reasons: it had been kinda cloudy and gross all morning and the signs in the visitor's center said that if you were going out on ANY trek in the park you should be prepared with a MULTITUDE of layers, jackets, rain gear, etc. etc. That's kinda nerve-wracking when you don't even enter the country with that stuff! Regardless, we made our way out to the trail and it was BEAUTIFUL.

We were so glad that the sun came out - we really couldn't have asked for more perfect weather for our short hike to the beautiful falls!

We got almost all the way to the falls when we were confronted by a SUPER small waterfall... could this possibly be the falls??? Better selfie just in case...

FORTUNATELY it was a false alarm and we reached the waterfall about 5 minutes later...

Which I proceeded to climb behind...because...why not?

Do you see me???

And then another quick stop ON TOP of the waterfall because, why not?

From there we made the very scenic trek another hour back towards town.

SERIOUSLY NEW ZEALAND HOW IS IT LEGAL TO BE THIS BEAUTIFUL ALL THE TIME.

When we reached town we made a short stop back at the visitor's center for the bathroom's before heading to our campsite for the night.

At our campsite, basically a parking spot in the middle of the woods which we shared with our new Parisian friend, Thomas, we cooked pasta for dinner and hung out for the night.

Tomorrow we're off to the West Coast and Hampton North!

Jess' and Jon's highlight of the day: our trek through Tongariro National Park