Day 5: (80 km) Hokuryu-cho - Ashibetsu

(08/03/06)

(obasan)

We quietly slipped out to the greenhouse for a banana pancake breakfast with melon and onigiri supplied by our hosts. Passing through Hokuryu-cho, we miss a turn but Emily spies a local bakery and we stop for a quick snack that turns into another round of extreme generosity. We are treated to coffee and cakes while chatting with the family that owns the shop. They even bought one of our t-shirts.

Moving on towards Ashibetsu, we had our first tunnel fiasco. Instead of just riding through, we stopped to discuss how to divide into two groups to ride through. I fail to see how this makes things any safer, but hope that people will get used to the tunnels eventually. A man pulled up to us and offered to ride behind our group through the tunnel. We took him up on it, thus holding up traffic for a few kilometers. There has to be a better way to do this.

Out of the tunnel, we continued on, nearly passing through the famed lavender fields of Furano. With a better pace, we might have even had time to see them.

That night we found a car-camp site that wouldn't allow campers with motorized vehicles. Just as well since it was expensive and had turned a beautiful lakefront into a dystopian camp-complex. While some people opted for a nearby parking lot, Emily, Adam, Mary, and I camped up near a shrine. Emily and I awoke to something scrabbling about near our tent. It would've been easy to assume it was nothing if the camp watchman hadn't taken the trouble to warn us about bears. It sounded small, but then, I'd never heard a bear cub before. Maybe they step lightly. Finally I went out to investigate, and seeing no trampled grass, I figured it was a small annoying critter. After investigating the strange nylon object in its yard, our little friend finally went away and left us to a short, fitful sleep.