Wedding Info

Directions
Exit I25 on Poplar and take Poplar all the way to CY Ave, take a right on CY, you'll be on CY for a few minutes, passing Wyo Blvd and the Walmart. On your right hand side you will see Armor's/Silver Fox Lounge and about a block past that is your turn right onto Prospective Dr. at the CY True Value Hardware store. Follow the balloons, which will tell you to take first left and lead you on a dirt road to a parking area. If you are coming from Muddy Gap to Casper you're going to already be on CY so look for the balloons at Prospective Dr. and you'll be taking a left. See you then!!


So we could have shelled out the big bucks and sent cards with directions and everything else, but we thought we'd be a bit cheeky and put it all here where many of you are used to checking anyway. The wedding will be at Mae's parents' house in Casper (4735 E Magnolia), at 5 pm on Sept. 5th. We are registered at the following locations:

Bed, Bath and Beyond-
http://www.bedbathandbeyond/

Target-
http://www.target/

The Pottery Barn-
http://www.potterybarn.com/

REI-
http://www.rei.com/

HOTELS
We have a block of rooms reserved at Super 8 and Ramkota Hotel, just ask for Hoffman/Horton. Super 8 is about a mile down Cy Ave from the house and Ramkota is a few more miles down the road but does have a pool.

Super 8
$80
307-266-3480
3838 Cy Ave

Ramkota Best Western
$85
307-266-6000
800 N Poplar


It's great being back home, we've been really busy but can't wait to see everyone when we see you!
Much Love
the Hortmans

The Snout and the Tombstone

This is looking back at Picton from the Snout.  The gorse is in bloom again and the sun was out, electrifying the water.

This is the best view we have had of the Sounds.  The Interislander ferry is taking one of it's several daily trips out of Queen Charlotte Sound, across Cook Strait, and into Wellington.  We just booked our tickets today and will be on that boat in a little more than a week.  The other day the ferry was canceled due to the 11 m swell in the strait, that is more than 30 feet.  Apparently they cancel if the swell reaches 7 m (20 ft.), we are hoping that we don't get a 6 m day where they are still sailing with 18 ft swell.  
The Coffin door of the Tombstone, "world famous in New Zealand since two years ago."
The Tombstone is named for the cemetery across the street, the hostel is the grey building across the road.  The address is 16 Gravesend Pl. and below the street sign the is another reading "No Exit", nice work there.  
Lynne, on the left, and Gordon have a wood fire pizza oven and often do pizza night for the guests.  Since we are "wwoofing" she did it all for us, including a bottle of wine.  It really was the best homemade pizza I have ever had.
Pizza night with the other "wwoofer", our new friend, Anne from Germany.
Snowflake is one of the two cats living at the Tombstone, the other is black.  Snowflake is deaf and therefore a very unique and hilarious cat.  She is not afraid of noise so she plays with the vacuum and leaf blower, etc., and she meow's louder than any other cat on the planet.  We call her "Snowflaken", a mispronounced version of her German name that Anne gave her after another British wwoofer couldn't get the German right.

We only have a week and a half left before we leave for Auckland.  This might be our last blog from NZ.  Thanks for reading them all year, we can't wait to see you all.

Love, 

Johnny and Mae

The quaint town of Picton

The town of Picton and the harbor.  The big boat out on the water is the interislander ferry which we will take to get back up to the north island.
The harbor in Picton, on walks around the harbor we've seen dolphins playing with sailboats.  They are awesome to watch jumping out of the water and racing with the boats.
The courtyard of the Villa, we spent a lot of time in the hot tub and Johnny spent too much time on the x-box that sits to the left of this picture.
The Van we drove to pick people up from the ferry.  No power steering and tricky shifting!
The Villa, an old victorian home which now has nicely trimmed roses thanks to Johnny.

Well our time in New Zealand is dwindling down, less than a month until we fly to Tonga, an island south of Fiji.  The last month we've been cleaning at the Villa, a hostel in Picton.  Johnny's been doing maintenance work outside and I've been making beds and cleaning the hostel inside. We live and work with 5 other people which has been fun and at times frustrating.  We cook for everyone once a week and serve the famous apple crumble to the guests every night.  We've met some really neat people and we are looking forward to singing karaoke with all of them tonight at a local pub.  Tomorrow we are starting at a new hostel in Picton that is much smaller, Johnny and I will be the only cleaners and we don't have to clean any bathrooms, which I'm pretty sick of cleaning.  We'll be there for 3 weeks and then we'll head up to the north island to fly out.  We'll be home before we know it!

Veltrousten (which we learned from our funny dutch friend, it means good night, unfortunately that is the only dutch word I know)

Maegen

Autumn in Aotearoa

The pinot noir of the Marlborough Sounds.  It is pretty much the only red grape that grows in the region.  The white's do better in the slightly colder climate.  
Had we gotten a chance to work for Wither Hills (above winery), we probably would still be in Blenheim.  Anyway, we saw a friend from the vineyards in Picton the other day and she said they got about 3 hours of work spread over 3 days after we left and then they were all done.  We left at the right time.  This winery was beautiful though, and you can clearly see that we are well in to Autumn here.
This vine was in our backyard, although we didn't capture it really well in these pictures, the fall colors are great.

In our last days in Blenheim we walked all over the hills you can see in the background of this picture.  They are called the Wither Hills (where the winery gets it's name) and are full of very defined ridges and valleys.  They were good walks and gave us a great view of Blenheim, the Pacific, and even the North Island.  We'll put pictures of Picton up soon.  

Cheers,

Johnny

There and back again- A girl's tale

This is where Bobby and Natalie are living, it's in Marlborough Sounds.  Our first stop after picking up Amanda and Laura from the airport.  It is really secluded, and both Manda and Laura almost lost it on the curvy as drive in.  It's a great place though, Bobby and Natalie are lucky to get to experience it like they do.  
From this dock Bobby catches about 66.666666 percent of their meals.  
This is either Hariet or Harold, one of the two White Faced Herons that live out front of their caravan.
After traveling through Blenheim, highlighted by the bicycle wine tour, we went to Akaroa, just South of ChristChurch.  Right after this picture was taken Amanda and Laura both narrowly escaped death as they slid down rocky chutes to the safety of the Harbour.  Mae took the long way around to avoid the scary descent.  
Here is the exact same picture minus the people.  It is a peninsula on a harbour that is in a peninsula, it was a really cool place.
We then stayed a night in ChristChurch for a night, and then went over Arthur's Pass to the west coast.  These waterfalls are near the base of Franz Josef Glacier.  
This is the glacier itself.
Mt. Cook is on the right and Mt. Tasman is on the left.  We were lucky with weather on the west coast so we were able to see them pretty clearly.  
This is one of the golden crushed granite beaches in Abel Tasman.  We did the last 8 miles of the Coastal Track which was a really nice walk.  The water in Abel Tasman is a vibrant aqua-marine, it's awesome!

This is a fern frond on a punga tree, which is an important symbol in the NZ culture.  It stands for new life and new beginnings, it is called koru.

We did a kayak trip to see split apple rock (below) it was a really fun trip.  We paddled through a couple of caves and got to enjoy the crystal clear water.  Johnny and I flipped our kayak over so Johnny could experience coming out of the kayak under water.

After Abel Tasman we drove to Nelson for our last night with the girls.  We went to Marchfest (NZ version of Octoberfest).  We had a great time trying new beers and listening to music.  It was a great trip with Amanda and Laura, it was awesome to see parts of NZ we hadn't and we enjoyed their enthusiasm for NZ.  Seeing them made it that much more exciting to think about coming home.  

We are back out on the vineyards but working for a different company and it is going much better, we almost enjoy it.  So we'll be doing that for the next few weeks.

Cheers, Maegen and Johnny

Settling in Blenheim

That's Cassie, the black lab, who is such a good puppy.

The pool that unfortunately we have only gotten in a few times because it is starting to cool down.

So Jordan is all taken care of and it took us to about 4 days of vineyard work before we quit.  Not a huge surprise to most of you, but it turns out we didn't care much for cutting out the diseased grapes.  We were on contract work which means we had to go at a pretty decent pace in order to make money.  But when you go at a decent pace then you miss some of the diseased grapes and the supervisor comes around and yells at you and tells you to go back and do it again.  So you have a choice, to either do it slow the first time and make no money or try to get away with going fast and then get yelled at and have to go back again and make no money.  We decided it wasn't worth the body aches to make 3 dollars under minimum wage.  So it looks like its back to cafe work for us, we just can't get enough (sarcasm).  Johnny's told me about a thousand times how much he can't wait to teach again.  Other than that we are doing great, we still love our new house and flatmates.  A couple of my friends will be here in a few days and we are going to travel around with them.  We are really excited about that!  

Car Talk - Fix Jordan

I now live the life of a migrant worker.  Not being able to understand your boss, him not being able to understand you, not understanding what you are actually supposed to be doing, being more of a number than a person (who's name is not important), and driving other foreigners around to different job sites daily.  On this particular day, there was a German girl in the front with me and three Japanese girls in the back seat.  We were driving down Old Renwick Road to the vineyard we would be working on all day while our minds atrophy.  We were in the middle of a long row of cars all following the boss when we heard a loud clunky grindy noise that chunked for awhile and then turned into a really loud whirring noise (unfortunately I'm not as good at car noises as Click or Clack).  The boss turned around and took three of the four girls, leaving the fourth with me.  We called AA and got a tow truck.  He hooked the cable to the tow hoop on the front bumper and started to pull Jordan onto the truck, of course pulling off the whole bumper in the process.  After all it turns out the timing belt is shot and it will cost exactly as much to fix him as we paid for him in the first place.  We will be accepting donations, checks or money orders made payable to "Jordan, the great white legacy".  He should be up and running, taking us back to lose our minds in the fields by Tuesday.  

Cheers,

Johnny