Well. ..

This morning we decided to make the best of it and see what the Skyline Gondola and Luge had to offer.

Being the early birds worked in our favor, as most of the park was empty yet and we got a gondola completely to ourselves.

Looking back over Lake Rotorua

They offered a pretty cool Nature Walk complete with some wildlife.

The birds were incredibly loud and diverse. There is a pretty big conservation program here to take out introduced predators. One such program has removed nearly 3 tons of rats, mice, possums, stoats, and ferrets!

On the nature walk

A little more info about stinky town

Then it was time do some luging! I haven’t been since I was a kid at Raccoon Mountain in Tennessee and this was Kevin’s first.

They had a nice little chairlift to take you back up to the top.

Of course, it wouldn’t be one of our trips without rain…while we were trapped…on the chair lift.

We finished the morning in the Jelly Belly store, where they had a larger than life game of Beanboozled you could pay to play. I was fine taking in the jelly bean art, myself.