Totally Worth It

Just checking in to say that Hokkaido was a blast and we’ve made it home in one piece! Here’s a quick rundown of what filled our 5 blessedly cool and humidity-free days of vacation:

• Lots of driving in the mountains
  
• Frolicking through gi-normous flower fields
  
• Sampling lavender flavored… everything
  
• Fantastic nature scenes and accompanying attempts to capture their beauty through photography
  
• Exploring cities
  
• Hiking through Hell’s Valley
  
• Wandering through a sculpture park
  
• Lunch with Ghengis Khan
  
• Gondolas and an impressive skyline observatory
  
• A chocolate factory tour
  
• Quality time, silence and conversation, laughter and tackling challenges with my beloved husband
  
• Tasty cuisine
  
  

It all culminated in an earthquake around Tokyo upon our return… although we didn’t know it until after we’d landed an hour late and traveled the last three to collapse at home. It all makes sense now- at the time, we were wondering why our plane seemed to circle endlessly over Haneda Airport instead of landing when the worst thing separating us from the runway appeared to be a few wispy clouds. They did show the pilot’s view of the sky on all the movie screens while we were killing time, which was pretty cool, especially during our eventual descent.

Yep, definitely a fantastic trip, which has also whetted my appetite for an excursion we’ve been anticipating for about a year now.

I’m so pumped for Nikko this fall.