On the morning of the sixth day of our Hokkaido trek, we passed through Date (dah-tā), a seaside town southwest of Sapporo on the shore of Uchiura Bay. The town is known for maricultural products such as scallops and sea urchins. This photo is another early experiment in softening rather than sharpening an image.
A mosaic of farmlands on the flight into Chitose evoked visions of fresh melons, strawberries, cherries, wines, cheese, and Hokkaido’s famous beef.
Although the city of Chitose, which lies just south of Sapporo, is generally seen as merely an airport stop, it’s a charming city in its own right. We found it to be the perfect place to stage and prepare for our trek around Hokkaido. The local Homac store sells butane camping stove fuel, there’s a beautiful green belt, and – as just about everywhere in Hokkaido – excellent restaurants.
A depiction of the Sapporo Beer Brewery paves the sidewalk outside the Chitose airport.
We quickly discovered that convenience stores such as 7/11 and Lawson are not only convenient (they all have restrooms… clean restrooms), but they feature very good coffee and a variety of tasty prepared foods to quickly fuel up hungry bicyclists.
Bob!? Is that you? We hadn’t seen this character since we were kids… Either we were a lot smaller or he was a lot bigger back then. American-style hamburgers have not been on our menu… and I really didn’t care for the way he was looking at Barbra.
A passerby who works with one of the international airlines that frequents Chitose stopped to talk with us as we assembled our bicycles outside the hotel. He recommended the restaurant Ramai, which specializes in curry soup. Chock full of chicken and vegetables and exceptionally flavorful, we enthusiastically pass along the recommendation.
Keen to check out Hokkaido’s young and growing wine industry, we found Grace Winery open for tasting…
…in addition to haskap berry wine (also known as honeysuckle berry), the winery features whites and reds of German origin as well as Pinot Noir. The grapes at this winery were grown in the Yoichi area, which provided all the incentive we needed to make sure that Yoichi would be a stop on our trek!
At the the Chitose Aquarium (well worth a visit) we had our first encounter with Ainu culture. The Ainu are indigenous to Hokkaido and northern Japan, sharing many traditions in common with the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest. Here salmon skin footwear is displayed.
Rare and endangered, Itou (Japanese Huchen) are a close relative of taimen – the world’s largest salmonid species. Growing to over a meter in length, there are still fishable populations in some of Hokkaido’s waters, though catch and release is strongly encouraged if not the law of the land.
The Chitose River is remarkably clean and clear despite running through an urban area. It receives a strong run of Chum Salmon, which each fall are caprtured by this Pacific Northwest style fish wheel for the local hatchery. In late spring and early summer, visitors to the aquarium can participate by releasing a cup’s worth of salmon fry into the Chitose River, giving them a bit of ownership in maintaining healthy populations of salmon and a healthy river.
Caddisflies and May Flies were coming off the river the morning we walked its banks.
These angles caught a brown trout – right in the heart of the city!
While this colorful finch sang his heart out.
Although the cherry blossom were finished, Azeleas were still in glorious bloom – including colors we’d never before seen. Across the river, an aosagi (gray heron) is perched on a rock, no doubt anticipating making a meal of the many Japanese Dace that populate the river.
Although the Japanese express great concern regarding the several hundred higuma (brown bears) that inhabit the island, of far greater danger are the huge suzumebachi (Japanese Giant Hornet) which account for a number of deaths each year in Japan. We found this one beginning a nest and uneasily got this capture before backing off.
We enjoyed a wonderful, stress-free stay at the Ana Crowne Hotel in Chitose. Hotel staff were extremely accommodating to our unusual needs – even allowing us to store our large bicycle boxes with them until our return in August.
Made it to Haneda! Bicycles, trailer, gear & clothing. On to Chitose!
Planning a bike trek around Hokkaido, Japan has been quite a challenge. People travel abroad. We’ve traveled abroad. People go on fishing sojourns. We’ve gone on fishing sojourns. People undertake photography safaris. We’ve undertaken photo safaris. People bike trek. We’ve… ridden our bikes. The challenge has been that people don’t typically do all these things in one, long, self-guided camping trip. Nor do they normally wait until they’re in their 50’s to attempt their first foray into something like this.
To prepare, we read books on bike trekking – from words of wisdom on ultra light traveling to advice from folks who tote along babies and dogs. We watched countless videos on how people pack and camp with their bikes. Along the way we feathered in fishing. And photography. And pack-rafting. And camp cooking. And backpacking. And bird watching. And then there was the fitness training schedule to help us get into shape for this adventure. With as many people in the world who have already pioneered all of these different adventures, no one seems to have attempted the catch-all combination of what we are hoping to embark on.
During the planning phase, we practice-packed several times. Each time, we realized another layer of equipment had to be fine-tuned. Without bringing a pack mule or a SAG wagon, we weren’t going to be able to carry along everything that we wanted to.
The pack raft was the first thing to go. Our rafts compact into fairly small bags, but they necessitate paddles and PFDs. The amount of space and additional weight all of that entails wasn’t going to work. A subsequent trial packing made it clear that our plan to backpack and camp in the back country of the Shiretoko Peninsula, a world heritage site, also required too much stuff – mainly the backpacks themselves. We still plan to explore a backpacking trip, but we’ll look into renting backpacks.
The next activity to get a hard look was fishing. Hokkaido is reported to have good populations of trout and char and even some salmon fishing as well as opportunities to ply ocean beaches and rocky shorelines for a variety of species. While we considered getting into at least some fishing to be a non-negotiable, we desperately had to figure out how to skinny down our equipment to one rod tube and one waist pouch. The compromise we settled was sharing gear instead of bringing two of everything. Additionally, we modified our lone fly rod to double as a spinning rod. (If it works, we’ll tell you all about it.) In the end, we packed a fly reel, a spinning reel, an 8-weight rod, a tenkara rod, a few small boxes of flies and lures and a small assortment of leaders and tippet material.
The next nonnegotiable was photography gear. Last summer, we limped through with substitute equipment and felt handicapped the entire summer. When we returned home and finally got our photos up on the computer screen for editing, they left us disappointed with the quality. So, our preparation for this summer involved numerous discussions and field tests regarding what gear would best capture the sights and experiences of our journey. What made the cut may seem like a lot to some, but we feel confident that we’ve streamlined our gear without sacrificing too much versatility.
The guiding question in all of this was, What kind of experiences do we most want to have? And the not-so-surprising lesson has been that if the trip is to be about going and doing rather than simply going and seeing, a certain amount of specialty gear is necessary. We know, for example, that we can enjoy first-rate food experiences while keeping our budget reasonably low by visiting markets and cooking for ourselves. But this strategy necessitates carrying with us cookware up to the task. Even birding pretty much requires that we take along a decent pair of compact binoculars and a field guide (which Jack went through with a box cutter and pared down to the bare essentials).
With our gear as fine-tuned as possible, we flew to Anchorage where Paramount bike shop took over the bike-packing – otherwise known as breaking down the bikes and packing them into big cardboard boxes. Meanwhile, we filled two much smaller cardboard moving boxes with the rest of our gear – boxes we’ll discard once we arrive in Hokkaido. And so, ready or not we’ve begun this summer’s adventure with three bicycle boxes and two moving boxes colorfully decorated with neon orange duck tape, packed to withstand the long journey down the West Coast and across the Pacific Ocean.
At the Anchorage airport, a helpful Alaska Airlines ticket agent was ready to assist us with the puzzle of moving our over-sized bike boxes through the maze of four planes, four airports, two languages and two countries. We were nervous about our baggage surviving the journey or getting lost along the way. As unconventional as it is to travel with ducked-taped cardboard boxes, we are happy we did. At our San Francisco stop, we looked out the plane window and saw our boxes being loaded into the plane. And thanks to the day-glow orange tape, we quickly spotted our luggage as it hit the conveyor belt in Tokyo. Hi-vis tape was a great idea! By the way Big Kudos go out to Terrie at the Alaska Airlines desk-for-troubled-travelers. She was able to figure out how to check our bags all the way to Hokkaido from Anchorage. Amazingly, the cost for all of our baggage was a very-reasonable $200! (Go Club 49!)
As the nerve-wracking airplane travel segment of our journey comes to a happy conclusion, we can now focus on the next leg of the adventure: putting our bikes back together, finding stove fuel and purchasing a few groceries. And then we will answer the question that has been in the backs of our minds (and the pits of our stomachs) ever since we conceived this trip: Will we be able to balance, steer and propel these vehicles??? Stay tuned!
Staring at my readied bike loaded with gear for this summer’s epic adventure, I am filled with… fear, excitement, anxiety, worry, nerves…
I’ve read so many articles and blogs and books about traveling. The common theme in these stories is excitement. The stories often have a dramatic edge. In the spirit of excitement, there is often reckless abandonment of caution and unplanned success. The stories are invigorating and inspiring – always with a happy ending. As my bike stares back at me, daring me … I find myself thinking that I’ve never read the version of the story that started with a daunting case of nerves. This seems to be my story.
The inspiration for this summer’s adventure began a few lifetimes ago. When I was young, my family used to camp. I remember watching bicyclists loaded with camping gear trekking along California blue roads from the window of our VW Camper. I loved to ride my bike. And I was instantly in love with the idea of being self-sufficient on two-wheels trekking anywhere I wanted to go.
Anyone who has known me over the past few decades could testify that I am an adventurous person. I have been known to get up and go do something based on very little information, sometimes on just an idea that something would be fun. I have had many happy endings to those stories, just like those I have read. So why worry now?
I stare at my bike. Its panniers and fork bags puffy with camping gear. As if in answer to my question, the front fork bag of my bike falls off and spills.
It’s the logistics of this trip that make it like no other. I’ve always been able to fill a backpack or a suitcase and go. But this summer, the adventure includes more than what can be packed in a backpack. We’ve planned a trip that involves bicycling around a foreign country for three months. The activities on the trip are to include sightseeing, culinary adventures, fishing, photography, backpacking and maybe even pack rafting. Aside from test packing and other activities we can do to get ready while in Alaska, the additional logistics are mind boggling. In order to get this trip started, there is the first leg – which seems to be the most daunting of the logistics – we need to maneuver all of our gear from our tiny village of Chignik Lake, through the city of Anchorage and all the way to the north island of Hokkaido, Japan. The other part of the logistics is planning for daily mileage and making sure we are in good enough shape to pull off this physical adventure.
All this planning is, of course, in theory. I have so many questions… How many miles can we realistically bike? Can we carry all the gear we want to carry? Are we over packing? Are we forgetting something critical? Will our gear be safe from thieves? Will we be able to find campgrounds as easily as we hope? Will the roads be safe to ride on? Are we going to have trouble transporting our gear with the airlines? Is this too big an undertaking?
So, Jack and I sat down to tackle, not the questions, but the psychology behind the questions. Our discussion centered around the question, “Do we really want to take on a trip so far outside of our comfort zone?” The answer, it turned out, was a resounding Yes!
So, plane tickets have been purchased. The first test packing has been completed. Our trip itinerary is coming together. The bike and treadmill workouts are underway. And the faith that we are resourceful people is the response to those questions that really can’t be answered until we begin the journey.
And now I propose a toast: Here’s to another summer of epic proportions living well off the beaten path. Cheers!
CutterLight 