Opuha dam

Despite May being the coldest and wettest May since time immemorial, or at least since record keeping began, June 1, Queen birthday Monday was warm and sunny in South Canterbury. We left Janine and Katarina to their homework and took Zak, Hannah and Shadow for a bit of a tour. We turned right after Pleasant Point and drove past the Raincliffs campsite, where we may well have camps in the future, and intersected Highway 29.

The Ophua Dam is off the road that lead to the Fox ski-field. It is a small hydro electric dam that was in the news recently as part of the dam 'blew out' as it was designed to, in recent flooding. The lake is becoming increasingly popular with boaties, although no one was on the water on Monday, despite the sunny conditions. Letting Shadow off the leash is always exciting because we're never quite sure that she is going to come back. She had a swim in the lake and then went rock climbing up the unstable cliff face.

The forecast for the weekend was dire - snow down to sea level, but often those storms cut across the sea to hammer Banks Peninsula. We had some rain but not a lot, and no snow sadly! Hannah and Zak had a sore throat over the weekend but were right as rain by Monday.