Today we had a great drive through the mountains from Tsuruga to Sakaiminato, a port city that is the gateway to Vladivostok for us.
We encountered many tunnels and construction sites on the way up. The longest tunnel was 4.1 km (about 2.5 miles)! I love the barriers at construction sites (they use cats too):
Elephants in a construction area (Eileen BJorkman photo)
First we took a back road to the town of Obama, where we sped past the Obama Rope Company:
Obama Rope Company in Obama, Japan (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
We took a lunch break at the Kasai Service Area and added gas to the Roadster. The Shell station wouldn’t accept John’s Visa or my Master Card — we hope this isn’t an omen of things to come!
Luke adding fuel at Kasai Service Area (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
Finally, we stopped at a rest area where we had views of Mount Daisen, which sits inside a national park and is a rival to Mount Fuji, as you can see from this photo.
Rest stop with views of Mount Daisen (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
Tomorrow we’ll be buying provisions for our 1.5 day ferry ride to Vladivostok. I’m not sure if we’ll have WiFi on the ferry, so I may be offline until Monday evening (late Sunday back in the US).
