Fall Hakkoda Hike

I FINALLY have access to blogger again!!! (I don't know what happened, but I've been unable to log on for the last few months.) Fortunately, I haven't done much, so there's not much to update:)

Chris left for a couple months in September to go to Red Flag in Alaska and then another training course in Vegas, so he (once again) missed fall in Misawa. Luckily, I'm blessed with great friends who will go hiking with me. The fall leaves in the Hakkoda mountains peaked in early October this year, and made for a pretty spectacular cool weather hike. 

We first set out on Saturday to see whether or not the fall leaves had indeed changed. It was just a fact finding mission...

As we began to climb into the mountains, it seemed like everything was very green until we turned a corner and found ourselves in the midst of fall.

This area is so popular for viewing fall leaves that there were parked cars and pedestrians all over the main road, just enjoying and photographing the fall colors.

We joined the parked cars and pedestrians... 

After driving around for a bit we decided we would have to come back later that weekend prepared to hike. 

Colombus Day, 2011. I love federal holidays. Laura, Danielle and I took advantage of a day off work to hike the Hakkodas. 

This has got to be my favorite fall hike so far.  The leaves were pretty spectacular.

The clouds were threatening rain the last part of our hike, but the weather held off just for us.  We had a successful hike... until about 10 meters from the parking lot.

At the very end of the hike (literally just a few feet from the parking lot), Laura misstepped and a giant mud pit claimed her shoe. Danielle tried to come to her rescue... and I took pictures. I must be a terrible friend.

They fished around for a few moments...

Then they decided maybe it would be easier to feel around with her feet...

Okay... that mud was way deeper than we realized.  I finally started trying to be useful and grabbed a stick to help poke around.

It wasn't until a helpful Japanese man came to our rescue that we were actually able to find the shoe. Eww... Maybe it should have stayed in the pit. But of course the nice man didn't just hand over the mud caked shoe, he first walked it over to a small stream and rinsed it out. 

And in the end, it was Laura's shoes (in the middle) that came out the cleanest.