Knobs Flat, Milford Sound

Well we made it back to California safely after a 12 hour flight yesterday. It is a little bit of a shock to be back but it is always nice coming home. This morning I finished downloading the rest of my pictures and I realized I missed blogging about an important part of the trip. So I thought I would add another post about our couple days down in the Milford Sound area. We headed down there from Queenstown after finishing our bike tour and before going on our trek over Ball Pass. Milford Sound is in the Fjordland National Park at the tip of the west side of the South Island. Milford Sound is one of the world's top travel destinations and was previously named by Rudyard Kipling as the eighth world of the world. The sound runs 15 kms inland from the Tasman Sea and is surrounded by shear rock faces that rise 1200 m or higher and rainforests that cling to the rock faces. Many waterfalls can be found streaming down the side of the rock depending on the amount of rain. There are temporary ones and permanant ones. 

The road into Milford takes you along beautiful alpine scenery and is 121 kms long. We stayed at a place called Knob's Flat which is run by the Department of Conservation and is 60 kms in off the road to Milford. It was an incredible spot. We had our own self contained cabin with kitchen, bathroom and a great view of the mountains from our window. Unfortunately, it rained two out of the three days we were there and the third day we had some sun with increasing clouds as the day went on.

The view from our window in knobs flat in the early morning. This is the bluest we say the sky as clouds continued to buildup. 
On our way to Milford Sound from Knob's Flat we stopped for a short 40 minute hike. The track brought us up through very wet rainforest to this alpine Lake Marion. It was very steep but well worth the views at the top.
We took a late afternoon 2 hour boat cruise on Milford Sound after our hike up to Lake Marion. It was pretty cold and cloudly but no rain yet so the views weren't quite as spectacular but it was still fun to get on the water. 
We took a small boat out on the water with a 80 passenger capacity as compared to most of the other tourist boats that were twice the size. It was much quieter and not too many tourists. 
This is a picture of another tourist boat getting a close encounter with a waterfall. The captain brought us very very close to the waterfalls. Some of them were gigantic and it was really cool to look up directly below them. The boat took us all the way out to the Tasman Sea and back and we saw seals basking on the rocks and a group of dolphins enjoying the wake of our boat.