Trailer Park Treasures

The kids are outside playing.

I’m sitting in the living room and watching it happen.

Sounds simple but when you’ve been traveling as long as we have, many times with only the choice of being cooped up in the room or doing something together outside, this is amazing.

Two kids, green grass and a boomerang. What more do you need?

Which brings me to my next point: Trailer parks get a bad rap.

This is our 5th park in 2 weeks and not one of the holiday parks we’ve stayed in has lived up to “My name is Earl” standards.

We worked with the “i-Site” office in Christchurch when we landed and together (in what I still think is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen a tourism outlet do) we plotted out our entire trip one morning and locked down our park stays throughout the south island.

We were able, in most cases, to pick parks that offered what we needed (WiFi, a place for the kids to play, room for all four of us) and it was wonderful. In fact, the closest thing we’ve come to trailer park trash is this

Trailer trash

That’s not to say they are esthetically quite as exciting as our stays at Four Seasons, our time at Hayman Island or our lovely villa home in Yangshuo but it is the closest we’ve come to having a home again …even if it’s only for a few days at a time.

They aren’t perfect. In fact, due to the World Rugby Cup , we had to settle for some that were as close to roughing it as a girl like me can handle.

Others have been so exactly “us” that it was hard to pack up and go. My favourite? A gem in Kaikoura that had room for all of us to find some alone time, good WiFi and a resident duck on the front porch.

But even when inside was…errr… lacking, the kids always had somewhere to run around.

They could step outside our room and play by themselves or with new friends with abandon.

We fell in love with New Zealand’s holiday parks and the communities within them. For a few days at a time it felt like we were a  part of a community in a space we could call our own…at least until we packed up the car and were off on our next adventure.

Have you done a New Zealand road trip? Stayed in a holiday park at home or abroad? What was your take on it?