After our picnic we did another hike, this time around Lake Matheson, which was supposed to give great views of Mt. Cook. But the mountain was fogged in, so the views were disappointing and the trail pretty boring. A total non-sequitir, but when I was a kid, for several years I used to have the same nightmare again and again. It involved a bunch of pirates, who were sailing very fast in a bathtub past a bunch of lines, like a bar code scanner. Most of them were skinny lines, but about every twentieth line was fat, and whenever they passed that, a creepy voice would call out, very slowly and deeply, the word picnic. I was creeped out by that word for most of my life for no reason at all, sort of like my puppet phobia. So I'm happy to report that my repeated typing of the word picnic is having no impact on my whatsoever.

51. Franz Josef

We continued driving south along the coast until we came to the glaciers, our destination. There are two glaciers, and each has its own town to cater to glacier tourists. We stayed at Franz Joseph, a small town at the foot of Mt. Cook. Even though the town is tiny, we got lost a couple of times looking for our hotel, the Westland Motor Inn, primarily because there's no such hotel. Well, their website says Westland Motor Inn, and when you call to make a booking they say Westland Motor Inn, but all the signage (and there's lots of it) screams out the very catchy name "Scenic Circle Hotels, a Flag Property, Mt. Mueller Branch". It's not clear to me whether it's a Scenic Circle or a Flag hotel, and never figured out what Mt. Mueller is since everything is about Mt. Cook here, and I will never know why they refer to their hotel as a branch. Anyway, we managed to check in and the hotel is just like the drive in motels lining America's highways, profoundly ugly. To be fair, though, the room was quite spacious, but nonetheless ugly. Unfortunately only one hotel photo to share with you, but it's quite flattering since it's covered in shadows.