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| A plaque at the summit of Mount Azuma-kofuji, an active volcano |
It's finally been getting colder here in the Aizu region. However, the feeling of fall has definitely not settled in yet. The biggest factor is the trees; some of them are still entirely green. It wasn't until this past week where the trees by Somei House actually started to turn color, and even those are only half colorful and half green.
That was the primary reason of why I wanted to wait to tackle the last easily-accessible driving road in the region: the Bandai-Azuma Skyline. And it's been a long-anticipated wait. I mean, just look at the map for the road itself. All those corners. All that mountain. It's all an hour drive away, and it was just calling my name. It reminded me a lot of New Hampshire Route 112, aka the Kangamagus Highway, because of its similar location in a national park. The only difference, of course, was this the Skyline had a lot more twists and turns to it.
So this past Saturday, trees be damned, I decided to head out to get a drive in before they close the road down for the winter. However, I made two major mistakes: I left late, and I didn't pop a motion sickness pill before I left. I didn't arrive onto the actual Skyline until around 1600 hrs, and sunset was only 45 minutes away. Still, I was amazed at all the people that were on the road. Some were even still joining me on the road despite the impending sunset.
I had Tackawanna's top down to try to enjoy the scenery. Unfortunately, it was getting down to the high-30s by the time I had gotten there, and although I had put on a warmer sweater, I was still feeling the cold air on my nipples. Plus, my hand on the steering wheel was starting to go numb. Thankfully, the heater blows strong in Tackawanna, so I was able to keep the rest of my body warm.
It had turned out that my decision to wait had been a mistake. Most of the trees either had dead leaves or they had already fallen. However, the road itself was still interesting, especially during the drive up the mountain. In some cases, you'd go around a bend, and then you'd be driving lower while going towards what appears to be the base of a ledge. You could only think to yourself, where is this road going to take me? This route has no tunnels, and I can't see the rest of the road behind all the trees. Tackawanna has older, worn tires (which will be swapped over to winter tires this weekend), so I wasn't able to experience the best of handling, but it was still a fantastic road to drive on.
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| They put special markers on the road for certain height milestones. Here's the maximum one for the Skyline. |
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| I saw a lot of those white poles along the sides of the road. I wonder what they're for. |
I stopped at the summit of the road (1,622 m, or about 5,322 ft) to get a photo, and then went further down the road to the rest house. Right across from the rest house was the summit of Mount Azuma-kofuji, an active volcano which contained a giant crater. There were a set of stairs to climb to reach the top. That is, if you could even call them stairs. Some of the steps were actually two-thirds the length of my thigh in height. The wooden planks were also not entirely fastened, or they were round logs instead which made balancing your foot on each stair a challenge. It took me about ten minutes to climb the staircase, but the view at the top was pretty nice. However, it was starting to get dark, and the circumference of the crater was pretty big. I opted to go back down to the rest house, blow my nose, and warm up with a cup of coffee.
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| Climbing the stairs took my breath away - literally. |
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| Sorry, folks, but there's no lava here. Volcanos don't need to have surface lava to be considered active. |
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| Mount Higashi-Azuma from the summit of Azuma-kofuji. Higashi-Azuma is 200 m taller. Some trails closed there were until recently closed off due to potential volcanic activity. |
Unfortunately, the footage that I had collected from the descent was too dark to use. But it was a good thing that I didn't anyway. I started the drive from the rest house just as the sun had disappeared, and I got a good view of Fukushima City from the road. It seemed so close, but it was actually pretty far, and I found that portion out the hard way. If you looked at the map of the Skyline earlier in this post, you probably would've noticed the insane curves after the rest house. I had to tackle those in the dark, with a convoy of six or seven cars right on my tail.
And I mean, on my tail. I was taking corners to the point of starting to feel body roll, and the minivan (fuck, it's always the minivans in Japan) was still directly on my ass. Everyone was taking the road going back down like a mini-version of Initial D. Apparently, I was going so slow that I was passed not once, but twice on my way down. And these are not the roads that you want to pass people on, folks. They were pretty damn narrow.
All of this took a toll on my stomach, which now had caffeine in it from the coffee. When I was a kid, there were two things that could get me carsick instantly: caffeine and caramel color. As I got older, I maintained a better resistance, but that night was just two much for me. On the way back, I spilled my lunch and the coffee twice. The first time, I had to actually stop on the side of a two-lane road, on an incline, to vomit. The second time, I had to stop in a 7-11 parking lot. Both times, the vomit was starting to pool in my mouth by the time I had stopped, so I had no time to even get out of the car. Thankfully, my driving position in Tackawanna was good enough for me to simply open the door, stick my head out past the footwell, and empty my face.
So, the verdict. Was the Bandai-Azuma Skyline like or better than the Kangamagus? No. But it was still a nice road to drive on. Next year, I plan on going back and getting footage of the descent. Apparently, the snow takes its time thawing, and they open the road in early April, so you can have the opportunity to drive through some snow walls, which sounds totally awesome.
The Skyline trip was the last leisure road trip of the season. I still haven't written a review about Tackawanna yet, even though I promised to do so after a month of owning her. I'll try to make some time this month to type up the review. I've certainly got a lot to say about her now.
-wp
