Gollum and Mordor

Monday, February 14th.  Drove from Taupo to the Tongariro National Park.  We were pretty excited as we were heading to the infamous Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings films.

 

After checking into our Adventure Lodge motel, we chatted with the friendly motel owner and he gave us some tips for some short hikes for the rest of the afternoon.  And, for you LOTR fans, we finally met one of the stars from the movies!  Here's his picture as proof. (The owner said it was portrait of his mother in law, but I think he was just kidding!!)

Meads Wall

In the afternoon, we visited Meads Wall in Whakapapa ski Village.  Don't remember this from the LOTR movies, but the rock wall involved an important scene with Gollum, apparently.

Will add more to this post later...
Sorry for the delay folks, we've been on the road alot lately and little time to blog or get internet access.

Starting after 4 pm, we hiked the Taranaki Falls trail, a 6K loop that starts near the Chateau Tongariro in Whakapapa Village.  Overall, a pretty easy hike that took us about 1.5 hours. The start of the trail crossed a scrubby, bushy open area that reminded me of scenery in the Okanagan of BC.  Then we suddenly entered this oasis of lush ferny forest that followed the creek.  Most of the trail to the Falls remained in the forest, which gave us some breaks from the hot late afternoon sun.  When we arrived at the Falls, we realized this was a happening place! 
A huge school group of high school age boys had already settled in to the pool at the bottom of the falls, some going for dips.  Needless to say, it was too crowded for us to go down there, but the view of the falls was nice.  To prove that there are stupid people everywhere, a young couple hung out on the rocks just above the falls - it would be easy to slip and fall there - ah, Darwin's law at work. Ironically we saw this same couple among the hundreds on the Tongariro Crossing the next day, AND we saw them a few days later on the ferry from Wellington to Picton!