After leaving New Plymouth we continued northward, planning on heading straight to Thames on the Coromandel Penninsula for our final 3 days together. While getting gas along the way, I happened to notice this sign:
Seriously????!!!! How serendipitous can this journey get!!!!
Off we went to find out what it was--I had a book for the LOTR locations, but not the Hobbit ones, so this was an unplanned surprise.
This land formation looked an awful lot like where Strider and the Hobbits stayed in LOTR when the Black Riders attacked.
We arrived at the "Hairy Feet Tour" just 10 minutes after the group had left--I was crestfallen....
...I started to take pictures of where we were...
...then Cory noticed this steep road saying "Private: Do Not Enter" and decided to hike up it to see if he could catch up with the tour.....this was a perfect example of his optimism and my pessimism....
5 minutes later, he stood at the top, waving his arms, saying he had found them! So, I ran up the hill (it was raining and muddy and slippery), and we found the site of the burned out farm where the Dwarves, Gandalf and Bilbo stopped for the night during their 'Unexpected Journey"!
The group had a cheery woman leading about 10 of us...and she told us about the various sites around their farm that Peter Jackson used for the Hobbit Movies---this place had some of the most exotic landscape all in one place; it was FANTASTIC!!
Our tour guide taking out some plastic to sit on to take photos...she was so enthusiastic!
Look familiar, Hobbit fans?
This site was used for the 3 Trolls scene; you can see 'Gandalf' at the top ready to let the sunlight through--although in the film it was CG sunlight, because this spot does not face east....
The coolest forest EVER---
...used for the Trolls' Cave, and the finding of Glamdring and Sting!
Check out the skull, haha.
Sting was put back in its hiding place for the next tour.
The beautiful ferns getting ready to uncurl. (The symbol is used a lot in NZ culture, called a koru, meaning new life, growth, strength and peace.)
More filming sites :):):)
One of the markers left behind by the film crew...where Bilbo stood :)
See the warg head? This is where one attacked from--
Cool fossils---
The beautiful silver fern--a NZ symbol.
More of the beautiful landscape around the farm and tour site.
Cory and I couldn't get enough of the place! Because we missed the first part of the tour, Trish (the tour guide) let us watch the slide show that was the during that part after the driving/walking tour, and we were able to see how Peter Jackson and crew converted their farm into a film location, then how they turned their farm into a tourist location. It was pretty cool.
Fili's sword..
My hero. If he hadn't trudged up that steep, muddy path in the rain, we would never have had such a fun day. My knight in Shining Armor xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo.
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