After two huge travel days, Day 3 slowed the pace right down. No long drives, no tours, no alarms just the sound of the Sounds, a cool breeze through the van, and the kids waking up to birds.
🌄 Morning at the Bay
Breakfast was simple toast, coffee, and the kind of stillness you can feel in your chest the views are mind blowing.
The girls burned off energy with a bit of basketball on the grass. Dotty chased the ball, Georgia out-dribbled everyone, and Ali refereed between laughs. Behind them, mist rolled down the green hills that cradle Momorangi Bay like a secret.
A cheeky weka wandered through camp, fearless and curious, pecking at anything shiny. It’s the local welcome committee here
.
🌿 Into the Trees
After brekky, we wandered up the short Momorangi Forest Walk a hidden DOC track right behind the campsite.
Ali and Georgia led the way through ferns and thick beech trees, their shoes crunching on gravel and fallen leaves.
Halfway along, we found a little wooden display showing some of the insects that live here wētā and other bush critters sealed behind glass, like a tiny natural museum in the middle of nowhere.
It was peaceful. No traffic. Just us and the sounds of the forest that gave this region its name.
🌊 Beach Time and Rock Hunting
Lunch was leftovers by the bay, then Dotty went down for her nap which meant one thing for Georgia and me: rock hunting.
We started turning over pebbles and shells near the edge of the water, and then I spotted it a chunk of what looked like wood turned to stone. It even had “grain lines,” but when I picked it up, it was heavy as lead.
That’s when it hit me: we weren’t holding wood. We were holding history.
🪨 The Rock That Looked Like Wood
This whole bay sits on what was once an ancient sea floor.
Over millions of years, layers of mud and sand built up quietly under the water.
When the mountains rose, those old seabed layers were lifted, folded, and baked into stone. The stripes that look like wood grain are really compressed mudstone and sandstone, stained with iron and streaked with quartz.
Now the ocean’s slowly carving those same layers back open so when you find a “wooden rock” here, you’re holding a page out of Earth’s old diary.
Not driftwood after all just the planet showing off its layers.
We packed up a few small finds reds, creams, and golds ready for Georgia’s “rock lab” in the van.
🍳 Dinner at Camp
Dinner was leftover chips from Blenheim, crisped up with bacon for me, egg for Georgia, and a veggie twist for Ali.
Not fancy, but proper camper food warm, easy, and eaten under the fading light as boats bobbed quietly offshore.
Dotty was asleep by seven. The whole campsite seemed to exhale with her.
🌌 Glow-Worm Hunt
Once the stars came out, Ali and Georgia grabbed torches and disappeared into the bush path behind camp.
They’d found them tiny glow-worms lighting up the forest wall like a galaxy tucked in the ferns.
Georgia came back whispering, “It looked like the night sky on the ground.”
🏕 Camp Notes
Where: Momorangi Bay, Queen Charlotte Drive, Marlborough Sounds
Type: DOC Campground (powered sites, hot showers, bush walks, beach access)
Highlights: Wildlife trail, glow-worms, beach rock formations, calm waters
Perfect For: Slowing down, letting the day find you
✨ After the whales, dolphins, and wild drives of the last few days, today felt like the universe tapping the brakes.
No crowds, no noise just family, rock stories, and glow-worms reminding us that the small things still shine brightest.
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