travel photography

International UFO Museum | Roswell, NM

/ Christina Hardcastle / Leave a comment

“In July 1947, something happened northwest of Roswell during a severe thunderstorm. Was it a flying saucer? Was it a weather balloon? What happened?” – Roswell, NM government website

Another stop on our little American road trip was the International UFO Museum & Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico. Whether you believe it was aliens or not, it’s definitely worth the cheap entry fee. There is so much to read, it could take hours to get through it all.

I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but damn, that whole situation in 1947 sure was strange!

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Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

/ Christina Hardcastle / Leave a comment

We went to the States to visit family last month. We decided to take a little road trip from Los Angeles to Texas, to have some time to ourselves before spending every day seeing as many family/friends as possible.
Our first stop: the Grand Canyon! There was snow EVERYWHERE. It was magical. But, we didn’t get to hike like we wanted to.

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New Zealand | Road Trip in the South Island

/ Christina Hardcastle / 1 Comment

As we continued our New Zealand adventure (see last post), we didn’t have much planned other than we would rent a car in Greymouth and drive south. We took the TranzAlpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth, which was very relaxing and beautiful. We walked around Greymouth a bit before starting on our road trip adventure. It was a few days of spontaneity and getting lost in the best way!
We walked to a view of the Franz Josef Glacier, where the biggest amazement was seeing how much it has receded so quickly. At least half of the 45-minute walk used to be covered in ice, less than 100 years ago. The only way on the glacier now is by helicopter (we didn’t splurge).
We stopped by many random beaches. One had a coffee truck right on the side of the road. One had a pod of dolphins jumping right by the shore. We stayed as long as we could stand the sand flies.
We stopped at scenic lookouts, short walking tracks, and even a distillery. Eventually we made our way to Te Anau, the gateway to Milford Sound (which will be featured in my next New Zealand post!).

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Franz Joseph Glacier

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Knights Point Lookout

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Dolphin at Ship Creek

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New Zealand | Around Christchurch

/ Christina Hardcastle / 2 Comments

My husband and I just turned 30, and to celebrate we went to the south island of New Zealand for a week (as you do). For the first couple of days we stayed in Christchurch. I had no idea how much the earthquakes affected it; the whole city was under construction! Still, we loved Christchurch. There is so much to see and do. The new buildings are awesome and there are some really good restaurants. This post is dedicated to what we mainly did there: sample the local alcohol 😉
We started at a Mexican restaurant (we’re from Texas, we just need Mexican food sometimes). They had all kinds of tasty margaritas, but their salsa was just not spicy enough for us Texans. The next day, we went on a wine tasting lunch tour in the Waipara Valley, which was AMAZING. We had so much fun and the scenery was absolutely beautiful. Drank some awesome white wines, and met some hilarious people.

Featured places:
Mexico Restaurant
Canterbury Leisure Tours
Waipara Hills Wines
Greystone Wines
Torlesse Wines

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Stay tuned for a couple more posts featuring our trip to New Zealand!

Tasmania – Wineries & Richmond

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My next post about Tasmania features Richmond and nearby wineries: Coal Valley Vineyard, Frogmore Creek, and Pooley Vineyards. Richmond is a really neat historical town with a lot to see! Including the oldest Roman Catholic church in Australia and the Richmond Bridge.

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This is the third post about our Tasmania adventure. The others show Cradle Mountain and Bicheno.

Glutton

/ Christina Hardcastle / Leave a comment

For this trip, we skipped the zoo and went to the Koala Park Sanctuary.  Absolutely the best decision of the trip; we got to pet koalas, kangaroos, see an entire sheep sheared, and all kinds of things, and it wasn’t crowded at all. It’s family owned and you can tell they really care about the animals. This little guy took the food right out of our hands, and got a little greedy…

Kangaroo stealing the food

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