mountains I'd thought about all trip. We soon could see them in the distance.
This gave us some inspiration during a totally exhausting climb.
We camped just outside an onsen town, where I tried the "onsen egg," which is just an egg cooked in hot spring water.
And I have to post this picture, because it's so silly and it worked so well.
The next day we had planned to leave our gear and bike up this crazy climb, but Gray hadn't slept well, and I couldn't find any decent climbing food. So I took the bus, which turned out to take about an hour. I think we made the right choice, because it took Aston Martin 3 hours to climb the road, and 30 minutes to get back down. The top looked kinda like this:
I only had about an hour between busses, so I quickly climbed the peak that the maps said would take 15 minutes, and then wandered around the shops. Here's me at the peak. Although I sort of trimmed my beard in Takayama, it's gotten pretty long since I last shaved in Tokyo.
That afternoon we crossed 安房峠 Abou Pass. I'm not sure how much we climbed in 7km, but we ended up at 1790 meters above sea level. Either way, this one was a little easier, and had better views.
Note that that is the road I was just on over there.
The top happened to be the border between Gifu and Nagano Prefectures, so we got a nice dramatic view.
Then we coasted down, learning that Nagano Prefecture likes to post signs counting their hairpin turns, and the proceeded to climb up to Kamikochi. Inside a tunnel. At 11% grade. For 1.3 kilometers.
After I recovered, we were greeted by monkeys! The scenery here was also completely gorgeous.
That's me on Kappa Bridge. Immediately afterwards we discovered that there are no restaurants in Kamikochi, and that everyone had either brought food for their camping stoves or were eating at exclusive hotel restaurants. I suppose we lucked out that some hotel receptionist was willing to sell us some rolls and rice balls, but it was one of lower points on the trip.
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