And the rain kept coming down

Wellington Anniversary Weekend meant a three day weekend  to enjoy with our caravan club friends at Kaitoke Regional Park.  This was not too far away, some miles north in rural Upper Hutt.  Being January, we were expecting nice warm weather.  After all, we have had several weeks of hot, muggy weather.  But no, what we got were three days of rain.  It started off quietly enough on Friday, with just a light drizzle. 

Misty hills at Kaitoke

It is a very pretty area  at Kaitoke, and the tenters were out in full force.  Cars of families arrived on Friday afternoon, to pitch their tents and take advantage of the last week of the school holidays.  Lots of children and dogs were running around in  the light rain, while the Dads started erecting tents, banging in the pegs to keep the guy ropes tight.  As our group needed somewhere to sit together under cover, Don had arranged to bring his caravan awning along.  With a bit of help, it didn’t take too long to put the awning up.

Up goes the caravan awning

To make it even roomier, we had brought along our gazebo.  This folds up like an umbrella, so needs people on each corner who then walk out extending the legs as it opens up.  The gazebo was placed right up to Don’s awning and the legs roped down  in place.

Then the gazebo is joined to the awning

What about a few walls to keep us warm and dry?  No problem, a bit of Kiwi ingenuity soon had the walls sorted.  Out came a couple of large blue tarpaulins, and some rope, and before we knew in, the walls were in place.

Walls are added

We needed something to hold the tarpaulins down.  Out came the thinking caps again – why don’t we use rocks from the river?  They worked a treat, able to withstand the winds as they increased over the weekend.

River rocks to hold it down

As the weekend wore on the rain kept falling, the wind got up, the grass was saturated, and the adjacent river to our camping spot turned into a churning brown monster. We were quite worried as we listened to the news of flooding in other areas around the country, and kept a watch on the water level.

The gentle stream turned into a raging river

Many of the tenting families packed up and left on Sunday morning.  It must be quite miserable in a tent in such bad weather.  Luckily our caravans were warm and dry and we had our awning and gazebo arrangement to socialise in.

Our spot at Kaitoke

The ranger came every night to collect the rubbish.  “How high will the river rise?”, we asked him.  He had only been working at this park for a few weeks so didn’t really know.  But he related the expected rainfall each day as he called by, and told us he would leave the gates unlocked at night, just in case we had to evacuate our sites.  That was not necessary, thank goodness.  As often happens on wet weekends away, by the time we got home, the sun had finally came out.  Never mind, rain or not, we always have fun when we go away.