Show me the way to go home

My three beautiful girls and
their Mum (also beautiful )

Alas, my Beachlands house sitting and dog sitting duties are at an end with Ian, Rochelle and a tired Ben and Ella home late Monday night. They had a cool holiday as I did. I had to leave my Brothers place at 6am the next morning. Early enough to get to Auckland airport to see my middle daughter Amber, 28, off on her plane as she left for Mexico to start another OE. Sad for us but good to see her getting away to see more of the world. My other two daughters, Jenna & Melissa, will hook up with her in New York for couple of weeks, then Amber is off to Rep of Eire before hitting England. Good luck Amber.

So that's the family stuff out of the way. Leaving the airport into rush hour traffic is not fun, so when the traffic got ridiculously slow, I stopped at the first park I saw and had a look around while the roads cleared. On my way home I occasioned to hit four parks, two that I'm not familiar with down South and the last two closer to home, Nicholson Park and Parrs Park, both out West. I  managed to remove a lot of nails and the usual trash from all parks but amongst the rubbish I also found several items of interest and as a bonus came away with $9.80 in spending.

 

Found these on the way home

As well as some less photogenic finds I found a cheap earring, a hair clip, a second knuckle bone (3 to go for a set!), a part of a broken brooch, a very small allen or hex key, a little silver heart possibly from an earring, a ball bearing (possibly from the 1807 Maori musket war or from the centre of a 1990's yo yo), a washer, a few bolts and of course the missing link. So an interesting trip home and one way to beat the frustration of being stuck in traffic.

So to sum up over the whole time away I managed in all my forays to parks and beaches to pull in a grand total of $32.50 spending, a few foreign coins and a few nice pieces of jewellery, not valuable in a monetary sense, but valuable to me none the less. I carefully organised the finds for a group photo Below. 





The coins jostled with the jewellery as they organised themselves for a group photo.

On my return I enquired on Ritchie and Gareth's efforts while I was away. Gareth it turned out could not make it up for the planned gold panning adventure due to work commitments and as he struggles with electronic communication failed to let me know. Gareth is back to Waiheke Island for a few days so will be hunting out on the beaches there. I'll be checking all the foreshore around the Auckland harbour for any washed up bottles with updates on his treasure hunting progress.

Holly and Hoppy two chickens
with cat genes

Ritchie, sadly lacking a detector at the moment, had a couple of sick chickens to help convalesce and he was also busy spending time fencing his garden around his stately home to keep the pigs out. That was his reason not to come visit me. So life is good, even though the body aches and creaks after my extreme MD-ing in the horrid conditions of warm sunshine, balmy breezes and lots of inviting beaches.

See you out there.