A beautiful day

Spring is coming, I could feel it in the air yesterday :) And I can again, as I sit out on my balcony in the sun to write this. Yesterday was the first actually warm sunny day we'd had in quite some time, several weeks I'd say. We've had sunny days and we've had a few that almost felt warm, but yesterday we got both :) I celebrated this in the morning by putting two loads of laundry out on the line, which were dry by lunchtime! Now before you laugh and think my life must not be very exciting if I'm using exclamation points over laundry, let me remind you that I do not have a dryer (I suppose if I have not previously told you this, then it isn't a reminder, but let's not get hung up on -technicalities haha). It is quite common to have a washing machine at home, but quite uncommon to have a dryer. There is a laundry mat fairly close by, that has HUGE dryers, but I am a bit reluctant to use them, because it costs $2 for 10 minutes of drying time. If you are wanting to dry big fluffy towels, well that adds up quickly. So this means our alternative is hanging them on the drying rack, which usually ends up on the balcony in the hopes of the wind drying it despite the cold. This is always an excellent plan until the wind is accompanied by rain :)

Anyway, enough about laundry. Once I was done playing housewife, I thought I'd spend the afternoon outside. Since I live in Taranaki, it was quite windy, but I thought I'd be brave and go climb Mount Paritutu. I posted about climbing that sometime last year, probably about this time of year actually, but the day I went up it was cloudy and gray so the view left much to be desire. It was delightfully clear yesterday so I was anticipating a gorgeous view of our majestic snow-covered mountain on one side and the ever-changing ocean on the other. I was not disappointed. How lucky I am to live in such a piece of paradise.

New Plymouth and Mt Taranaki

Beck Beach

Industrial side of town

The Port

The Sugar Loaf Islands