Following our daughters Lord of the Rings selections, a stop in Tongariro National Park was in order. We were a little nervous showing up when everyone else had major hiking gear, spiked shoes and poles. Jessi had converse on. 🙂 But, we knew we’d all hiked 14ers in Denver so we figured we were just fine. It was cold, but other than that, the hike was magnificent. We didn’t hike down to Emerald Lakes, but we could see it from where we turned back. We knew we had to make it to Rotorua before dark so we didn’t want to take too long. There are options for hiking from one point to another and then taking a shuttle back, but again, we didn’t want to risk it taking too long.