It’s the school holidays at the moment. Last week I took my two boy’s aged 6 and 7 to McLaren’s Fall Park in Tauranga to take part in a scavenger hunt. In my mind I was like “Capital -A- for Awesome, they are going to love this!” The reality was quite a lot of whining from my 7 year old…(and a lot of internal eye rolling from me) … sigh, anyway after being left no alternative he hopped in the car. And of course when we arrived, he got out of the car and ran around like a mad thing high on life -totally loving it!

We parked at Cherry Bay, which incidentally was full of Cherry trees in blossom, ahhh…lovely. But as you may (or may not know) there’s no time to stop and enjoy the serenity or smell the flowers, as I have to jog if I’m to keep up with the boys!

The kids and I had a great time together doing the scavenger hunt. There are many tracks here but the track we walked went from Cherry Bay to the park entrance/exit and was flat and easy going (~2.2km return). P.s. I totally recommend a scavenger hunt as an exciting way to get out an about with the kids. Click here to see the one we did.  Afterwards we walked back to the car to grab our lunch for a picnic under the Cherry trees, when we ran into some friends from Raglan! Love serendipitous meetings! We had a hilarious competition as to who was brave enough to feed a swan by hand, the winner getting an 🍦! In the end we also counted hand feeding ducks as swans can be a little bit scary!

There is sooo much more left to explore here so we will be back soon!

Note: The track is stroller/buggy friendly from Cherry Bay -bottom flat-to park entrance/exit. There are toilets, BBQ’s and picnic tables dotted around. Pick up a map from the information centre when you arrive. For more information about McLaren Falls Park click here.

No dog’s permitted in the park. However you can take dogs along the Ruahihi Canal walk (just outside park) on a lead.

Other activities: Disc golf (Frisbee golf), walking, bike friendly trails, Marshall’s Animal park, camping, glow worm walks, kayaking, cafe, Trout fishing (need a licence, can buy from information centre.)