Ani woke up smiling and saying “thank you for cleaning my potty.” Where that came from, we don’t know, but these kids come up with and say the strangest things.

At least it made us all laugh. And because it made us laugh she kept saying it, which made us laugh more.

We have accepted at this point that we will leave camp at 10 or 11am every day. And thanks ok because we don’t have anywhere to be, except in two days.

We had booked a boat tour in Milford Sound for tomorrow but the weather called for a lot of rain so we delayed it by one day.

This meant today was going to be an even shorter driving day as we changed our campsite to one closer to town.

We purchased a New Zealand Department of Conservation camping pass for 30 days before leaving the U.S. and having that membership makes it easy to book campsites. But it’s a government website after all so it’s not great and cancelling or changing dates is a hassle, especially when doing so on a phone with sporadic signal.

While today may have become an even shorter driving day, we were going to do laundry so we likely won’t be getting to camp until 6pm.

Miles did some more homework this morning (he did some last night too but when we told him it was getting late he burst into tears and went into full meltdown mode because he was so tired). This morning’s session was short lived though because Ani wanted to help Miles.

But Ani was being a rascal and not helping at all. Instead she would provoke him and then laugh. This made Miles mad and eventually everything was put away after Miles had had enough and poked Ani in the arm with a pen.

After everyone had calmed down, we had breakfast while looking out of the van windows and seeing so many more campers that had shown up after we had gone to bed.

One was parked only 3 feet behind us. And another was about 15 feet to our left. Given there was someone almost nose to nose with the right front of our van, we were almost boxed in. It’s such a different style of camping here in New Zealand.

While everyone seems like they are on top of each other in the popular camping areas, not once have we heard people speaking loudly, causing a raucous after hours or anyone playing music. Everyone is respectful and that matters more to Andy than having people be more spread out.

We hit the road just before 11am. It’s such a different pace than we are used to. On the PCT, we would have hiked at least 10 miles by 11am.

But with the late bedtimes, the kids wake up around 9 am. It is not the schedule that we would choose but it is the schedule that we have fallen into and it works (except for when we get to camp late and the kids are hungry and have to wait for dinner to be made).

The drive today was another spectacular one. Rolling green hills, lakes and dramatic mountains on all sides. Half way to town we passed 2,000km of driving on this trip!

The van drives well and handles reasonably well for what it is and how much it weighs.

When we got to town, Andy was ready to take the clothes to the laundromat and wanted Miles to go with. But he couldn’t even convince Miles to go in by bribing him with candy. And that’s when Andy gave Miles the nickname Chief Homebody.

We were all getting hungry and once back at the van, Andy mentioned he was craving a burger. It sounded good to everyone so after dumping and filling our tanks we went to The Ranch Bar & Grill.

The burgers were pretty good but the we could have done without the fries. And Miles’ burger from the kids menu was the same exact size as ours except it was served on a square plate and ours were on rectangle ones.

After we ate, Laurie took the kids to Sputnik Park nearby while Andy went to retrieve our clothes. They weren’t dry yet so he added another $4 to the machine and ran the dryer again.

Andy drove to the park and saw Laurie squealing on the zip line. She was having so much fun she did the zip line more times than Miles.

The kids weren’t really feeling the vibe of the park so we went to a bike rental place nearby and rented quadricycle- 2 sets of pedals, 2 steering wheels (although only 1 works) and seats for 4.

It took some getting used to but Laurie and Andy found their groove and pedaled the family along. We rode down the side street and eventually turned onto the beachfront road.

Miles handled the steering wheel from time to time and the hand brake. We giggled as we veered to avoid potholes. Our rental was only for 30 minutes, which was plenty with our butts sliding off the seats.

After dropping off the bike, we packed into blue wave, drove to the laundromat, then topped off our water and headed to camp, 20 minutes out of town.

We got to the Henry Creek Campground around 6pm as predicted. It was windy, which kept the bugs away.

After Andy parked the van at the end of the dead end road in a spot designed for a much smaller vehicle, he let the kids drive while he went down to the water.

We have seen this while driving last week, but this was the first time we have come close to this type of beach.

It’s unlike any beach Andy has ever seen. The large, magnificent trees we are camped under give way to smaller, scraggly trees that grow out of the rocks on the beach, with small shrubs growing in the water.

When Andy returned to the van to cook dinner, Laurie and kids went on a nature walk through the forest behind our van.

Miles was the leader and directed Ani and Laurie to follow him wherever he went, which included over and around logs.

Dinner tonight was rice with chicken, carrots, onions and asparagus. We are proud of ourselves for cooking most of our meals thus far on this trip and only eating out a handful of times.

After dinner we played Uno. Ani won both rounds and then it was off to bed, which was around 9pm.

But going to bed doesn’t mean falling asleep on this trip. Both kids wanted to be on the top bed with Andy. Miles has been sleeping up there pretty regularly and Ani had a routine too.

She’ll come up, then want to nurse and go down. Sometimes she does this twice but we try not to let her. It gets to be too late and disruptive to everyone’s sleep. But we weren’t successful tonight.

Upon returning to the lower bunk, Laurie agreed for Ani to nurse. Ani excitedly called to Miles and Andy, “She said I can have bootie, she said I can have bootie.”

After a good laugh we all said goodnight to each other and went to sleep. It was still windy when we went to sleep. And it’s supposed to rain. We’ll see what nature has in store for us.