Tuesday January 17th Gore Museums and Ice

Tuesday January 17th Gore Museums and Ice

Today while Mom went to work, the kids and Dad traveled to Gore, NZ.  Like our town of Winton, it is a sleepy little town that most people just drive through and is best known for its moonshine making past (they even have a museum about it).  

Our first stop was the Animal Reservation.  Gabriel had found it on the Garmin and it is supposed to be an animal petting zoo thing.  Not so much.  My first hint of trouble was the fact there was no website.  When we finally arrived we saw an open, but imposing gate complete with some very unusual Native American sculpted heads (hence the “reservation”).  There was a huge dog fitted with a leather collar and spikes staring at us.  We could see a few scraggly animals behind the fences but decided we better high tail it out of there!

We headed to a cool park and the kids made some friends before going to the Gore i site (information site).  On the way there we found another neat park complete with free aviary.  We even saw a peacock spreading its feathers.

The Gore i site had a cool historical museum that the kids enjoyed.  Next, we made it over to the Gore Air Force Museum.  A very eccentric man was the owner/operator and it was basically his house and farm.  He had a WWII Tiger Moth but it was not able to run secondary to the junk all around it.  We were able to tour a few hangers with helicopters and planes that he was restoring as well as several storage rooms full of lots and lots of stuff.  He could be featured on an episodes of hoarders.  A lot of it was aviation related from military uniforms, to spent shells, to pictures.  However, a lot of it was just goofy stuff that he liked to show.  Much of our hour or so there was spent listening to his jokes!  The kids loved all the things to look at and the chance to sit in a plane and helicopter.

After that adventure, we headed to the Gore multisports complex.  This is a first class facility with theatre, sports complex, ice skating rink, and huge swimming pool complex.  The kids were excited to ice skate so we had a few hours to get out of the scorching sun and into the cool ice rink!

Gabe supermans down a NZ slide in Gore.

The peacock at the Gore, NZ aviary.

Gore clock tower.

Gore museum.

The equipment at Ursula's office . . . just kidding.  Some old medical 

equipment in the Gore museum.

The Gore Airforce Museum-it has seen better days.

B and T in a Helicopter.

One of the many over stuffed rooms of the museum.

Gabe in a plane.

Dad and Tara on the ice in Gore.

Gabe and Brody.  Gabe is just cooling off on the ice-he was hot!