We woke up in Te Anau after an amazing cruise around Milford Sound. Today would be a lot of driving as we travel up to Franz Josef Glacier. We had an idea that even though we won’t really stop anywhere, there should be an abundance of picturesque views on on this drive to Glacier Country.

We got up and got breakfast before we got in the car, synced up our podcasts plus the most diverse road trip play list you can think of, and hit the road.

Like I said, more driving than stopping this day, but from the pictures, you will see that pictures does all of talking at this point. We did stop at Lake Wanaka for lunch and stroll around the lake that gives the town its name before continuing the migration to the west coast of the South Island and heading north.

We made it to Glacier Country after dark and arrived into the small town named after the Franz Josef Glacier where we quickly checked into our hostel room and had dinner. We called it a night as soon as possible as we knew tomorrow would be an eventful day in more ways than one.

We woke up and knew today was important.

The main reason is that today, March 28, is our fourth year wedding anniversary. So, you know what that means…..

That classic will be played a few times throughout the day.

Another reason, was that Sanna and I would hike for 11 kilometers and go up over 600 meters to get a good view of Franz Josef Glacier.

Sanna and I have learned already that we are sometimes foolishly stubborn. Our excursion up to Roberts Point on our anniversary would be an excellent example of this self assessment.

The Roberts Point trail was hailed and warned as a trail for “experienced” and “mature” hikers. We thought to ourselves, well we have hiked before and we consider ourselves pretty mature and experienced so we should have no trouble with this trail.

Boy we were in for a rude awakening. The estimated return time for this hike was 5 hours. We did it in 7 hours. 7 hours due to the amount times we had to stop because we were either exhausted on the way up or experiencing muscle cramps and spasms on the way back down.

Let’s just say after we were done, we got our fill of hiking for a short while. However, it was worth it.

The timely and arduous trail didn’t give us much time to drive up to Greymouth for a nice anniversary dinner.

So, we did what we could. As a result, we had a romantic dinner in our accommodation which was two pizzas from dominoes and water. That meal oozed with intimacy and romanticism as we ate 5 dollar pizzas on the cardboard it came in.

But it was nice to calm down after a lot walking (including some actual climbing) and some driving and just laugh at our inherent ability to ignore the warning signs then show a funny and blinded faith in our ability. Case in point for our grueling hike up a mountain because we didn’t want to be defeated and to retreat plus we had the desire to get a great view of a glacier which are not that common outside of Arctic environments.

Lastly, it is just another adventure that continues to forge us together on this journey we are exploring together as a married couple. Love my Sanna Byrd.