Travels with Tackawanna 7: Nunobiki Plateau Wind Farm

>tfw Germany, for some reason

I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. To put it into perspective, the sun was coming up just as I had finally exhausted myself. I've had a bad habit of staying up late recently, so to help maintain a steady sleep cycle, I'm "disconnecting" after midnight from now on. Therefore, I'll need to make this post, and make it quick.

Today, I decided to go see the local wind farm. In Koriyama, the next city over from Aizuwakamatsu, there is the Nunobiki Plateau Wind Farm. Situated in the mountains overlooking Lake Inawashiro, it has 33 turbines, each of which could power just over a thousand homes. It also has an observation area, Akatsu no Katsura, where you could overlook the turbines and see the many sunflowers that the city plants. Therefore, I hopped in Tackawanna, now with a set of new speakers in both of the headrests, and we set off.

I took two wrong turns today. The first was not turning onto the road that connects National Route 294 and the power station. Google Maps showed that a local Lions sign reminding drivers to buckle up was the marker for the road. As it turned out, I missed that marker, and had to take some side roads to get to the right road.

The second was taking the first right instead of the second. I ended up taking a mountain road that landed me in Tashiro, a southeastern area of Aizuwakamatsu. I therefore had to go back the way I came. (I caught that part on the dashcam, but Google Maps does not see the connection between the road from Tashiro and the road that I had originally turned off of, so I can't show you the route that I took.)

The road to get to the observation area had quite a few twists and turns. It felt like a good location for a hill-climbing rally stage, especially with the rather high grade required to get up the mountain. Going down the mountain was much easier; I was in second the whole way down, and barely even bothered with the actual brake.

In addition to the observation area, you also had the opportunity to actually drive through the farm on the service roads. That's what I ended up doing first. When I first came in, a cloud was rolling low on the mountain, so you could barely see the tops of the propellers. However, as I was heading back towards the road, the sun came out and shone brightly for a brief moment. It was pretty nice.

How they designed the sunflower "maze." The left shape is a smiley face. The right shape is the city seal.

I arrived at the northern portion of the observation area. A few families were there, and a few more showed up along the way. I went over to see the sunflower field, but apparently, I was way too early. The sunflowers, although being planted over three weeks ago, were still in the sprouting stage. I'd have to wait another month or so for the sunflowers to finish growing. Bummer.

After a brief lunch from a nearby food stand (300 yen for a glass-bottle Coke, what the fuck?), I drove over to the southern portion of the observation area, where there was an observation tower that you could go to the top of to get the best view. The base of the hill it was on had gravel stairs...and that was it. Everything else was dirt and rocks. As a lazy American, the climb got me out of breath rather quickly. However, when I got to the top of the hill, and then the top of the tower, the view was worth it. I could see all the way to the lake, and I could also see all 33 turbines. They even had a "map" along the perimiter, taken almost ten years prior, of what the view looked like and where all the local cities and towns were positioned.

That's a lightning rod on top of the tower.

I took quite a few photos, and I don't want to link them all onto this page, so here is a link to a Google Photos album with all the images.

This is a three-day weekend due to the holiday, and I'll be out socializing for the rest of it. Tomorrow I'll be going with my lab to a farm in Koriyama, and that night I may be going to a car club meetup at a restaurant in Aizuwakamatsu. Then on Monday, I'm going to another lab's event at Lake Inawashiro. I'll be sure to talk about both days when they've happened.

-wp