A Tale of Two Kellers: Rob Roy Glacier

It's raining today which it hasn't done in about 2 weeks so time for another blog update! Chip works 3 days this week and has Thurs.-Sun. off...what a slacker...so we'll head out of town this long weekend and explore one of the well known hikes around the South Island. As for me, I'm still keeping it real with St. Mary's Hospital (in Grand Junction) and will be helping them with some recruitment functions until mid-November. In addition, we bought a new (to us) car!! White Subaru Impreza...stay tuned for pics...Chip wants to wash and wax it before we show it off to the public :)

This past weekend Chip, our new roomies (along with a visiting friend), and I laced our hiking boots up for a beautiful hike in Mount Aspiring National Park to see an active glacier, called Rob Roy Glacier. The scenic drive was about 1 1/2 hours from Queenstown and the hike was no longer than 2 hours one way. It was such a fantastic hike - We've not done one like this before with a massive glacier waiting for us at the end, waterfalls lining the mountain peaks and thundering pieces of the glacier breaking off (the first piece I actually thought was just a plane flying overhead!). We hung out at the top for about an hour, ate our lunch and enjoyed the views. We were also excited to see our first kea (that's key-uh), New Zealand's mountain parrot, that hopped and flew around us while we were eating lunch. The kea is endemic to the South Island's high country and they look like a big green parrot cruising around in the mountains.
Looks like my video finally downloaded...the video function hasn't been working until now so here's our first video of the glacier breaking off. We caught it on camera just in time so I hope it works!!