Today we were stuck walking around town with a brochure and a camera

Originally posted on January 21, 2015, by cruisingrunner

Mangonui is a cute little tourist town. It has a small grocery store, a small liquor store, a couple coffee shops, several restaurants (fish and chips, burgers, Thai, Indian, and Mexican), and an abundance of holiday accommodations. There’s also a small boating community here as evident by the numerous privately owned mooring balls and the small Mangonui Cruisers Club whose windows I peered through this morning before they had opened up for the day. Like the town of Russell, there is a lot of history here. And although Mangonui lacks most of Russell’s charm I can still see it’s draw as a relaxing getaway destination. The people at the visitor information center give you that small town feel and are happy to chat with you about this or that and point you in the direction of whatever interests you. It’s been a nice place to get in some short, leisurely runs, but it would be a tough place to get in a long run without doing laps or running along the highway. I’ve been in many places where I’ve had to do laps, but since coming to New Zealand I’ve been pretty spoiled so far.

Also like Russell, Mangonui has a “Heritage Trail,” which is basically just a self-guided walk about the area to marked historical sites, ranging from 100+ year old re-purposed buildings to views across the harbor of Maori Pa sites. Since we were going to be here a few days, I had what I thought was a great idea for a school project for the boys. Instead of doing their regular daily school work I gave them the option of taking a camera to shore and snapping photos of each of the sites on the Heritage Trail and then making an electronic photo album. They didn’t choose that option in Russell, but if it’s the only alternative to their regular school work I thought maybe they’d bite. Not a chance. They grudgingly chose to do the Heritage Trail, but only after asking me how long the trail was and how many sites there were and figuring out that it would be quite a bit less time than regular school. I tried to pump them up about it. I told them they could be as creative as they wanted with the photos. The ONLY criteria was that each of the heritage sites were captured in a photo. I didn’t care who or what else they might decide to include. They still weren’t biting. They moaned and groaned about how boring it was going to be. Then, I even suggested they take “Little Woof,” one of Brenden’s favorite stuffed animals, and put him in each of the photos. Nope. More moaning and groaning. I couldn’t believe this was less than 24 hours from when I was writing about how great my boys are for stepping up and salvaging a fallen cell phone. As they continued to moan and groan about how boring this would be, I finally just told them that it would only be as boring as they make it. They have the opportunity to make this fun. It’s totally up to them.

As they dinghied off to shore, I was still hopeful, but alas, it was not to be. They came back with boring photos and made a boring photo album with boring captions.

I guess I failed at young teen motivational tactics. But they also failed at wearing down mom, so at least I have that.

-D.

Click here to see their complete boring photo album.