Discover New Zealand, Home of Middle Earth
	We are back in Queenstown at the Creeksyde Top 10 Holiday Park, our previous stopover there. We find the picturesque buildings and decorated boilers scattered about a familiar sight. After breakfast, we head out to Deer Park in the Kelvin Heights to see some of the LOTR locations we missed in our previous visit. The entrance to Deer Park has an automatic toll gate, but the smallest bill I had was NZ$100, so I inserted it and got a bagful of New Zealand two dollar coins in change.
	From this vantage point we can see Queenstown and look down on our holiday park and our favorite restaurant. This area was used for a number of publicity shots, including the famous one of Gandalf on the front of the LOTR Location Guide. The photo of the Fellowship marching across the hills single file in Eregion was also filmed here. Stefanie was more interested in the animals, and took a number of stag pictures, including this one of a suspicious stag watching to make sure we didn't menace his harem.
	Just below us is the village of Frankton, the Queenstown airport and the outlet of the Kawarau River. At the top of the hill is the set of a Korean prison from the film, The Rescue, which neither of us had ever seen or heard of before. We remarked on the incongruity of leaving this old set from a film few people ever heard of here while the sets from the greatest motion picture of all time were all torn down.
	This glassy mountain tarn immediately struck us as a likely candidate for Mirrormere, also known as Kheled-zâram, the birthplace of the dwarves. On the right we can see the path from Edoras to Helm's Deep, along which Eowyn led the refugees from Rohan. Since this path is along the base of the Ered Nimrais mountains, the only likely candidate for this body of water is the Deeping Stream, which flowed into the Entwash. The refugees were going toward the orc invasion from Isengard, so Theoden was taking an awful chance in sending his people that way. No wonder Aragorn tried to talk him out of it!
	While I was scoping out the geography of Rohan, Stefanie was finding animals to take pictures of. She thought these baby goats were soooo cute! The mama goat wasn't all that thrilled about her kids associating with Stefanie, however. Later on we were mugged by these llamas that stood in front of our camper van and wouldn't let us by until we took their picture or gave them some food, which we didn't know was available from local vending machines. They obviously thought that their left profile was their best side.
	This doe with the ragged ear found us and pestered us for something to eat. Stefanie remarked that she would like to get a close-up photograph, so the deer thought, "You want close? I'll give you close!" and stuck her head in the window. We didn't have any food, but a lady we met on the road said we could "give it a go" with Stefanie's bottle of beer, so I got a picture of Stefanie feeding a beer-drinking deer drinking beer.
	Coming back along the Kawarau river, we passed the A. J. Hackett bungy jumping location, which, we were told, is the place where bungy jumping was invented. It is right next door to the Pillars of the Kings, that we visited on Tuesday. I asked Stefanie if she wanted to try bungy jumping, and she said she didn't want to. She asked me if I wanted to and I said yes, but I was afraid I was too old and might break my hip or something again. Yeah, right!
	For our continuing exploration of Rohan, we next headed toward the Ida Valley and the scenery around Poolburn which was the set for the Rohhirim villages ravaged by the orcs. The mountains going right down into the reservoir reminded us of the entrance gates to Mordor that were torn down by the Watcher in the Water. The water is slightly rippled, suggesting that something is underneath the surface. We passed the Cromwell hydroelectric power dam at Clyde. There was precious little water coming out of the turbines.
	We were warned that the road to the Poolburn Reservoir is suitable only for 4WD vehicles, but it didn't look too bad, and we hadn't been instructed to stay off it, so I said, "what the heck!" (Stefanie was not entirely convinced and claims I didn't say "heck.") Anyway, we took off into the area where the Rohhirim, Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn were attacked by wargs, but we didn't see any. The landscape got progressively more difficult, but the "road went ever on and on" so we followed it as long as we could.
	We saw a lot of Rohan, and remarked that it didn't seem too good a place to graze horses, but perhaps it is greener in summertime. This area may be the entrance to Dunharrow and the Paths of the Dead. The road got more and more tortuous, and finally we stopped at the top of an incredibly steep slope and decided we were as close as we are going to get. This is a picture of me coming back to the camper van after scouting for alternate paths to tell Stefanie that we were turning back (to her great relief).
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