Kiso Road Day 5: The home stretch

Breakfast at Tajimaya.

The weather was much better, so we spent the morning walking around Magome.

From Magome, we caught a bus to Nakatsugawa, a train to Nagoya, and the Shinkansen home. What a trip!

Kiso Road Day 4: Ask not for whom the bell tolls...

Breakfast at Daikichi.

The proprietress took a picture of us out in front and said she wanted to use it for their website. Most of the draw is Gus, I imagine.

From Tsumago we hiked to Magome. This is the most famous hiking stretch of the whole trip, and the only time that we got rained on.

These straw horses must be some kind of local thing; we saw them in a few different places.

Apparently they have bear issues, so they place these bear bells on the trail so we can scare them away. Or maybe it's a dinner bell.

Along the way we passed odakimedaki (男滝女滝), which means "male and female waterfalls." I think the first one is the male one and the second one is the female one; I'll let you use your own gender stereotypes to guess how they picked the names.

It looks like they worked pottery fragments into the asphalt on this road.

When we arrived in Magome we were pretty wet and cold, but we found a place to get some hot soba. Gus gives it a thumbs-up.

In Magome we stayed at a place called Tajimaya (但馬や); they gave us a nice big room that was easier to baby-proof than most places we stayed in.

Dinner at Tajimaya.

Kiso Road Day 3 or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Horse Sashimi

Breakfast at Murachiya.

We had to wait a while for our train from Kiso-Fukushima to Nagiso, so we walked around town some more.

Nagiso isn't the most interesting town, but they do have the momosukebashi (桃介橋), which is apparently one of the longest wooden suspension bridges in Japan.

From Nagiso, we hiked to Tsumago, our next destination. On the way, I played with the "vivid colors" setting on the camera to turn it into a tropical rain forest.

Back on non-vivid colors.

We decided to let Gus stretch his legs a little.

Endurance events aren't really his thing. He's more of a short-sprint kind of guy.

And an attacking the photographer with a toy hammer kind of guy.

Exploring Tsumago.

We spent our third night at a place called Daikichi (大吉). They definitely had the fanciest food that we got all week.

Including fun stuff like crickets preserved in soy sauce...

...and more horse sashimi.