Let's go to Port Aransas Pass-- Arthur's Port, Port-a-pass?

We went to Arthur's Pass for Kevin's birthday today, and despite my inability to keep it seperate from Port Aransas,TX in my head, it was beautiful.


The two-and-a-half hour drive into the Southern Alps went rather quickly with Janet driving and Shawn keeping us entertained with his guitar. Breakfast and Tiffany's and Damien Rice were the biggest hits. I think he and I enjoyed our rendition of piano man, but it's doubtful anyone else did.


We stopped at the Cave Stream, where numerous tourists have met untimely ends attempting to spelunk, and listend to the stream roaring down into the darkness. The picture doesn't really capture the noise. Of course, Shawn felt the need to splash around in the ice cold water. First the beach, now the stream; I'm noticing a pattern here.


The coolest part about the cave stream was actually all these rocks that we spent a long time climbing around on. The guys never did figure out how to get up the macho way, but Janet and I found the gradual incline on the other side of this rock rather helpful. And the view was excellent.


Given that it was the Kev-meister's birthday, we decided he needed a cake. But between the altitude and the climbing we got perhaps a little over-excited about the whole thing.


But after the frenzy we thought better of it and paced ourselves. We even offered a little cake to Betsy, our trusty steed, who made it all the way through the mountains and out again, essentially without incident.


Okay, there was one incident. It started raining, and Betsy, she's not big on functional windscreen wipers. So we spent about an hour parked next to the lake. Bonding. Which just happens to look a lot like going crazy, in this particular shot.


This was my favourite part (I hope my kiwi coworkers are happy, I'm spelling things silly now) of the day. The Devil's Punchbowl Waterfalls. Absolutely spectacular.


And we got close enough to feel the spray, it was completely amazing. As Kevin was so fond of saying today, "wow."