Oze National Park

(We are skipping ahead to more recent news since summer vacation seems like a LONG time ago!)

Over a long weekend in September (17-18-19), we took a mini-vacation up to Oze National Park in Gunma prefecture and did a little camping and some trekking. Now, I call it trekking for two reasons: 1) that's what Japanese people call it and 2) it was definitely not hiking.

Oze is actually in the area of Gunma, Fukushima (very far from the nuclear reactor), and Niigata Prefecture. It is mountainous, but the really interesting part are the marshes that are surrounded by mountains. It was amazing and a perfect excursion to take a baby on. The majority of the walking was completely flat.

One thing about Oze that was astonishing was the wind. It was incredibly windy the entire day while we did our trekking. It made for really amazing pictures when we set out - the clouds were practically racing across the sky! But after a few hours, the wind also made it more exhausting to carry around Touma. That job fell mostly on Shimon, but the last hour I took over. I love having a backpack for the little guy, but we really need to only carry him in it! He's heavy enough without adding any little weight.

We took lots of pictures, but I'll just post a few so you can see what our adventure was like!

The evening before our trekking, we took a short walk. Papa and Touma had fun!

Heading out for the day. Camera bag and baby

Feeling energetic enough to strike a pose!

Slowly getting more tired as the day wore on... but the weather stayed beautiful ALL day!

Family portrait

This coming weekend we're heading out for a family and friends (a couple of Shimon's friends are going to join in the fun!) campout. It's going to be much more low key this weekend. Head to a campsite on a lake, make a campfire, enjoy said camp fire and relax. Should be good fun.