Taking advantage of cheap flights within Japan during your birthday, we flew to Hokkaido on Rebecca's birthday, October 1st. From Fukuoka we flew into Sapporo where we rented a car and started our journey.
Our first day (pink line) was spent driving north-east. We visted some small towns along the way but mostly we just headed for our final destination of Sounkyo Onsen, part of Daisetsuzan National Park. Sounkyo is a area famous for a large gorge and hotsprings (onsen). We stayed in a lovely Youth Hostel. The next morning we set off to hike Daisetsu Mountain...
We hiked up to the top of Daisetsuzan that morning. The leaves were just starting to change so the colors got more and more beautiful the higher we got on the mountain.
After a good hike and a bowl of hearty miso ramen we headed from Daisetsu National Park to Akan Lake and our hotel at Akan Kohan (follow the orange line on the map).
The Akan area is famous for hotsprings and the beautiful glacial lakes in the area. From our hotel we had a wonderful view of Akan-ko (lake). From Akan Kohan, we did a scenic tour driving along some glacial lakes and also driving through the famous wetlands of Hokkaido (yellow line). Our final destination for the day was Kushiro, a town famous for seafood - especially crab and ikura (salmon roe). The finale to this day was having grilled seafood at a really cool restaurant.
From Kushiro, we headed back to the airport outside of Sapporo (Chitose). Our final day was mostly sight-seeing from the carseat because the road between Kushiro and Chitose was so slow moving and hilly we were worried we might miss our flight! It was a beatiful drive though!
For the photo album of our trip, visit our yahoo photo album.