Coming Up Close

The temperatures have really dropped here, on Sunday we drove out to McLaren Falls - a local place very popular with people. I was hoping there were some Autumn colours and as you can see from the above photo this is the main road around the park. Although it was raining and quite cool it's quite a peaceful place.


Coloured leaves in red, yellow, gold, orange and green on some of the trees around the park.


One of my favourite spots within the park is Cherry Bay, sometimes kayakers use the lake but today we saw lots of ducks and swans (as per the photo below).



Near the entrance are alot of rocks and smaller falls, the larger waterfall is further up and around the corner. The other half was taking shots with his camera after he climbed down ahead of me.

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These photos were taken today in the courtyard outside where I work. This is a vine that is covering the fence and the red/gold/yellow/orange colours are lovely. This is my favourite time of year, crisp mornings, sunny days, cooler nights - awesome!

What's it like where you live right now?

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There's a very distinctive chill in the air, leaves are changing colour, there's a light smatterng of frost on my car in the mornings and nights are getting darker quicker.

Tauranga Marina looks after many boats and in the weekends we quite often see families with their fishing rods at the end of the pier.  Autumn is here and as you can see by these photos above these are the skies we are seeing more and more of I drive home from work at night.

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A couple of weekends ago the other half and I were on one of our walks around town on a Sunday afternoon. The last of the cruise ships were in port, this one is the Golden Princess, one of the biggest there is - the ships tend to stop over Winter and then start coming in again over November/December - just in time for Summer.

On our way back on the other side of the beach we passed happy people enjoying the last of the Summer days. I had to get a shot of this bike locked up against the post, something about it caught my eye :-)

After relaxing on Saturday we drove out approx 15 minutes out of Tauranga to the Te Puna Minden Road lookout which as you can see by my photos below has sweeping views from before Mount Maunganui out all the way to Welcome Bay. Quite the scenery huh?



Out in the distance if you can see a large mountain that's Mount Maunganui - where we live :-)

This native NZ tree fern's leaves had turned to brown at the bottom as the old growth is falling away.

This one is my favourite, rain droplets on leaves and spent flower buds of a NZ native Five Fingered tree glisten in the overcast morning air.

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One of the perks of living within walking distance of the beach is that we get to take deck chairs, our cameras and some refreshing drinks with us and relax and enjoy the scenery.

At the moment it's cooling down considerably, we can definitely feel the crispness in the air that Autumn brings but sometimes after work it's a nice change to be able to wind down with colours and skies such as these that we saw earlier this week. Such stunning work of art don't you think?

Hope your week has been awesome :-)

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Sometimes during the weekends we like to go for a walk along the beach and back home via the shops which are usually full of people.  A couple of weekends ago we spotted this line of motorcycles with the owners, who look like friendly members of a gang standing nearby. Some of the designs on them look like they were painted like clever artists don't they?

With Easter been and gone last weekend we decided to go on a short roadtrip for something to do so we drove about 30 minutes out of town to a very scenic pretty place named Kaiate Falls. Also known as Te Rerekawau Falls this place was worth the effort and exercise. Once we were there we walked down a series of steps past small waterfalls and streams until eventually we were at the bottom at the largest one. Quite a few other people had the same idea as us and it was good to see small children enjoying the scenery too.

The early days of Autumn are here now so I expect to see colours changing alot more but for now I hope you enjoy these ones. For more Skywatch Fridays click here :-)