Monday the 8th, Glenorchy & Kinloch Lodge

Monday was another beautiful, warm, sunny day! We had plans to go to Glenorchy, and to have dinner at Kinloch Lodge. Craig and Stephen had discovered the Lodge in a review in the Air New Zealand magazine, and made reservations for us to go. Kinloch Lodge is located in Kinloch, located at the head of Lake Wakatipu. The Lodge, restaurant, cabins and campground comprised the whole of Kinloch, which was at the end of 9 km's of gravel road!

It was a new experience for us, as when Craig made reservations, they directed us to their online dinner menu, and asked us to call on Monday morning with our order! So, we spent a bit of time deciding what to have (Lee and I - salmon, Craig and Stephen, duck!)

We packed a picnic lunch and our swim wear and left Queenstown on another adventure. We saw tons more amazing scenery, stopped briefly in Glenorchy, and then headed off to Paradise for a picnic lunch. The area around Paradise is where a lot of the Lord of the Rings movies were are filmed. We wanted to get to the picnic area at the end of the road, but we kept having to ford streams! We finally got to a point where we decided that the water was just too deep for our rental car, and turned around.

We found a great meadow for our picnic and had fun taking lots of pictures. After lunch, we left for Kinloch, and a swim! Again, it was quite a long gravel road - lots of bouncing around! There were lots of happy NZ cows, who kept an eye on us as we traveled along.

When we got to Kinloch, we headed out on one of the tracks for a walk. We found a great place along the lake, with a nice sandy beach, and stopped there. Craig and Stephen were very brave and actually went swimming. Lee and I were chicken - the water was cold, and there were millions of SAND FLIES!! We all madly applied insect repellent, but we all got bitten.

After the swim, we headed back to the Lodge, to change clothes for dinner. At this point, we all smelled like "eau de insect repellent"! As I was changing clothes in the ladies room, sand flies were biting my back - where there was no repellent! Miserable creatures!!

But, our reward was a glass of wine on the deck, while waiting for our table, and then, a fabulous dinner!! Lee and Stephen each ordered mussels as an appetizer, and Craig and I shared an order of garlic cheese bread. The salmon and duck were fabulous, and we ended the evening with sticky date pudding!! Then, it was back over the gravel road, and home to Queenstown, and a rousing game of 500!
More of the beautiful scenery on the way to Glenorchy

Lake Wakatipu with the southern alps in the background.

A beautiful mirrored reflection of mountains and clouds.

As we were taking the picture above, a car stopped to do the same thing, so we took pictures for each other! I love when that happens!

On the way to Paradise

This was our picnic spot! It was beautiful!!

This log was a great excuse to be silly!

This is Lake Wakatipu, and the sandy swimming beach we found

Kinloch Lodge. The restaurant is on the left, behind the umbrellas. It's a small, intimate restaurant, with about 10 tables - ALL of which were full!

Stephen and Craig, swimming!

Another kindly person took this picture of the four of us after dinner. There was a beautiful sunset that evening, as well.