One Saturday morning….well, I guess, that’s how a lot of our posts could start. Most of our daytrips we take on Saturdays. We usually leave early in the morning—by 8:30 and drive. Some Saturdays we wake up and think, “Nah….we don’t want to get going, pack lunches, pack kids’ stuff, figure out directions…”. But then we remember that we’ll have plenty of cold snowy Saturdays coming this winter when we will have more time than we want to stay at home and go to…um….base pool? Weasel’s den indoor playground? (yeah, not so many choices close to home).
Anyway, this particular Saturday in October, we got up and first did some chores. Unfortunately, living in Japan doesn’t exempt us from having to do chores. Katya has been mastering cleaning the bathroom (minus the floor) and Alex is becoming a pro at quality dusting. Right after lunch we decided that this is our last chance to find this mysterious “RED BRIDGE PARK”. Some of our friends told us years ago about this park on the way to Aomori, but every time we’d attempt to find it, we’d follow their directions and then turn around because it looked like we were going nowhere.
Not this time! We were persistent since directions said: “Right before you go over the Red Bridge, turn right and drive for awhile. It will look like you shouldn’t be there-construction, rubble, trucks. And then you’ll see this park on your left”. See? Easy! Anyway, it did feel for awhile like we really shouldn’t be there, but then we found the right spot.
So this Shinrin park is another place to go and enjoy nature…and play hide-and-seek. It was hilarious, let me tell you. Kids are so fun to play hide-and-seek with! And I tried to teach them to say “Tra-ta-ta for… (insert the name of the person you found)” just like we used to play in Ukraine. Hmmmm, I guess, rolling “R”s are still a little bit too hard for the boys.
Beauty was all around us!
There is no playground, but there is a place to have a bonfire and have a picnic. A cool thing about it is that it also has a vast area, size of a soccer field to play some games like football/soccer/frisbee.
We really had fun at this fun little park. I am not sure if camping here would be a great idea though. Do you see that mountain? It’s like a mine of some sort, so excavators are working all day up there with all there “reverse beeping sounds”.
On the way back, we took a short detour (although kids thought it was not so short). Every time we would drive back from Aomori, we’d see signs “Bathing place”. This time, we decided to follow the signs. After going through some tiny towns and fields, we found another indoor swimming pool, sports park, playground which had no way to get to, and finally the “Bathing place”. It turned out to be the OTHER side of lake Ogawarako, which is the lake that is right on base. On the picture below, technically, straight ahead is Misawa AFB.
Unfortunately, the bathing place didn’t look spectacular (plus it was October, obviously), so we drove to another Bathing Place that we did enjoy this summer with our friends. This time, we went to the playground nearby.
Alex performing, as usual.
And Mark is just being a cute 2 year old.
Okay, I have run out of steam-haha. I hope that now you are definitely convinced that fall in Northen Japan is absolutely gorgeous. I have said it before, but fall in Misawa is my favorite time of the year. Pictures cannot even depict how breathtaking the mountains and leaves look when trees are changing colors. Sad, this is our last fall here.
Good night. I have lots of catching up to do in my blogging world.
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