Photo Friday Comes on Monday: Taranaki
The latest installment in my reports of our adventures over the last year. This is part of the 4 months we spent in New Zealand (January through most of April) this year. We spent most of the time on the South Island, and I've covered most of our outings there. This is a trip my husband and I did on North Island, after our son went back to the US to finish his final term of college. Mt. Taranaki is the primary feature of Egmont National Park (est. 1900). Named Taranaki by the Maori, and Egmont by Captain Cook, the mountain is a perfect cone, at least from a little distance, reminiscent of Mt. Fuji. We arrived on a drizzly morning, driving out of decently fair conditions down below into the cloud that shrouded the mountain from a few hundred feet below the Visitor's Center. We had toyed with the idea of climbing the mountain, but the dubious weather combined with the 5000' climb (and descent) put us off it. Instead, we chose to hike the Pouakai Circuit, a loop along the base