Day Eleven – Chasing the Fog

An early start for Milford Sound is negated by my misreading the map and I leave Queenstown in the wrong direction, on the wrong road. I would like all my friends to know this is not an easy thing to do in New Zealand and requires substantial effort. Basically there are two roads in New Zealand. The first is a north/south road (NZ-1) and the second is an east/west road (NZ-6) I do not know where NZ 2,3,4,and 5 are but I cannot find them on a map. Of course, I cannot find my way out of a town with a population of 4,000 so perhaps I am not the navigator I have led my Marina del Rey boat neighbors to believe I am. When Kris inquires why I did a u-turn and returned to town, I explain testily that I wanted to view the town from another hill and besides, I wanted to give the ice a bit of time to melt before I slid across it. She seemed unconvinced of the efficacy of my explanation.

Again the signs proclaim the road is open to Te Anau but probably is icy. This is getting old. Like any other driving day here, the road goes up a hill and then comes down a hill before starting back up another hill. These people would make great roller coaster designers. We are excited to see what Kiwis refer to as Fiordland with Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound as the two most famous. For those of you who are interested, both are named incorrectly. They are NOT sounds, they ARE fiords. The difference? A sound is formed by river erosion, and a fiord is carved out by a glacier. Hah! And you thought reading this blog was a waste of time! We do not have the inclination to visit Doubtful Sound even if it is the remoter of the two, as it requires two boat trips and a bus ride over a small mountain range (of course) while the head of Milford Sound can be visited via one’s own vehicle. From the city of Te Anau, it is 75 miles in and 75 miles out and one can take 4 or 5 hours to explore this NZ National Park during the middle of the day since there are practically no places to stay at the tiny town of Milford Sound. One is even warned to fill up with petrol as there are no gas stations once you leave Te Anau.

There is a short five minute walk along the way that takes one to a small glacial lake with picturesque views of the mountains rimming the valley we have just entered. The view is replete with ducks and various other forms of wildlife seen from a deck stretching out over the lake’s edge. While I gaze at the strangely narrow horizontal wedge of a cloud bisecting the mountain in front of us, Kris stares over the railing into the shallow water just beneath us. Pointing to the water she asks me what that thing is in the water. I look and tell her it is a pipe. She says it is S shaped and why would a pipe be S shaped? I am content to not know the answer but assure her it is a black pipe that has fallen into the water. I continue to stare at the weird cloud formation now hanging just a hundred feet or so above our heads when she says, “Look!” I do and I see the black pipe slowly move into deeper water. Once again the Critter Spotter Supreme has done it. The black pipe is an indigenous Black Eel of about 4 feet in length. She is very happy to be 2 feet above the water on a sturdy deck. I am SO very happy to be proven in the wrong once again.

Not wanting to stay the night in Te Anau, Kris locates a 3 room motel only 30 miles from the Sound (really a Fiord) just outside the park in a place on our map has labeled as Knob’s Flat. KNOB’S FLAT? A place is named Knob’s Flat? While Kris is proclaiming it to be a romantic rustic stop, I personally love the idea of sleeping in an oxymoron. Us wordsmiths are weird that way. She calls the number while we are still a long way from Te Anau and reserves a room from PC whom she says sounds quite a friendly man but somewhat… ahhh … different.

“Different?” I ask.

“Well.” she explains. “He asked when we would arrive.”

“What’s so different about that?” I say.

“When I told him we‘d arrive there about four in the afternoon, he said that was good because he would be finished helping the serial killers by then.”

Now, Kris is adamant she has heard him correctly, but I guffaw and continue watching the road for ice in spite of the fact that the roads have been drier than a San Fernando Valley summer. Directly in front of me, I espy the same weird clouds forming a well defined and stratified layer on the mountains ahead of us. As we approach closer, it appears the cloud layer is really a fog bank horizontally wedge shaped and slowly flowing into the valley we are traveling through as though it were following us. The sign on the valley floor tells us we have arrived at Knob’s Flat. Knob’s Flat is comprised of two small one story buildings, each with three doors to what are obviously motel units. Set back from the road are two other tiny sheds housing what I assume would hold a generator and a tool crib. As we pull into the gravel pathway in front of the newer of the two buildings, a man dressed in work overalls and sporting a wild crop of curly Einstein-like hair shooting out of his head at all angles smiles. He has a missing tooth.

Suddenly Kris’s recollection of his comment about helping the serial killers does not seem quite so whimsical. The fog bank is flowing in and has obscured the entire mountain now and before we can get out of the car it obscures the road behind us that we have just left. At times like this, I recall all those government types telling me how to react in what I might perceive to be dicey situations. The reaction instruction usually was to unlock the safety on your weapon. Kris on the other hand jumps out of the car, smiles and extends her hand to PC. He smiles broadly and then she asks him about the serial killers. You have to admire nosy women. They know no fear. PC laughs and says the local game wardens are having a problem with the local Possum and Stoat populations decimating the nearby bird flocks. To reduce the Possum and Stoat numbers they are putting out feeders with a poison mixed in porridge. CEREAL porridge. The game wardens are CEREAL Killers. The weird fog lifts revealing towering mountains surrounding us and best of all, the room is spotless.

Before he leaves for the night and returns to Te Anau, PC unlocks one of the other rooms in the other building. “Just in case something happens, like a fire, you can sleep in the other building,” he explains. I am not about to ask why he thinks something could happen. PC then points to my cap with its “Port of Milwaukee” logo and says, “Oskosh.” It turns out he is a pilot who has built his own little plane and has even visited Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA to attend the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual EAA convention. We compare homebuilt aircraft notes as I also have attended the EAA convention held at Oshkosh’s Wittman Field. Wittman Field is famous for being the busiest airport in the entire world for 9 days every August when thousands of strange aircraft take off and land on average at about the rate of one every 38 seconds for nine consecutive days. A slightly faster pace than the flights of fancy I may have when landing at Knob’s Flat and much faster than the weird fog bank that chased us into Knob’s Flat.