> Drove to Taupo again where signs warned of traffic delays tomorrow due to "An Event" (unspecified). Drove south for hours around east side of lake, amazing scenery, spent all day driving loop road around Tongariro National Park. Went up to Whakapapa on Mt Ruapehu, or Mt Doom to LotR viewers. Took photos of slopes of Mt Doom, battlefield of Last Alliance etc, found tiny patch of snow left over from winter, pranced around on top of it and made very, very small snowman, go us.

wintermute, and/or others, might be interested to know that a book has just been published which gives ALL the filming locations of the trilogy. I flipped through it in a shop yesterday. Wintermute: we were right about the battlefield of the Last Alliance; it was down in that canyony bit below the carpark. The part where we went up the ridge to watch the rock climbers will feature in the second movie, if I read the book right.

I'm glad now that we went up the other summit road, because that turned out to be a location I wasn't aware of at the time. The forest we went through on the way up there is going to be Ithilien in the second movie. There is a track to the waterfall, which goes off that road someplace. I wish I'd known about that.

Brunnen-"oh well, going through Ithilien without knowing about TEH SECRAT BASE is probably appropriate enough"G