The Adventure Begins! Day 1 of our NZ road trip! Tauranga - Mt Ruapehu

After running around like headless chooks scrambling to get ourselves organised we finally set off on our campervan trip! We'll be on the road for the next 3 or so weeks travelling around (mostly) the South Island of NZ! You beauty! We are both super excited to travel around our own backyard after spending the last few years travelling the World.

So here is day 1! We left Tauranga and drove to Lake Taupo for a quick swim in the lake. It was a scorching hot day so a swim was well needed. We had already stayed in Taupo previously so decided to cover some more distance and drove through the Tongariro National Park - what a gorgeous, scenic drive that is. Check out our drone video post from when we hiked the Tongariro Crossing last year!

This stretch of highway is known as Desert Road, because it's pretty barren, just the mountain range and National Park to one side and not a whole lot else. The road is often closed in winter due to snow and black ice, a lengthy detour if you really need to get through.

There is still snow on the top of Mount Ruapheu, which is a ski field in the winter months. And for any Lord of the Rings fans out there this is Mount Doom looking ominous!

Our home for the night was at Waiouru Army Museum with this stunning backdrop. If you have a self contained vehicle, which means you've got a toilet on board then there are many free camping spots all around NZ. It's so awesome!

So we climbed up onto the roof, ate our dinner and watched the sky light up pink as the sunset. A great first day :)

We'll be sharing our trip, where we go and what we get up to on Steemit and I'm hoping we can use Steem to fuel some of the journey! So if you enjoy our posts and pictures please give us an upvote and share the love 💕