Shosenkyo Gorge

 I've been wanting to do this hike for a couple months now, but other events have kept us busy.  It's part of Chichibu Tama Kai National Park.  It follows a stream all the way up, and has many stunning rock formations with a waterfall near the end.  While you can see some of the highlights without doing any hiking at all, we enjoyed the whole walk.  It was beautiful.

 The trail is more of a little used one way street, with only a few cars now or then.  It has lots of fun stops along the way.  We started all the way at the bottom of the road to make sure that we didn't miss any of the animal shaped rock structures.  Some of the rock formations took some imagination to see, while others were spot on.  A few that we remember being good were the cat rock, the monkey rock, the Mount Fuji Rock, and the sushi rock.

This is Monkey Rock can you see the face?

In the background is Mt Fuji rock

At the end of the hike is a small village with lots of crystal shops.  It also has a ropeway that took us up near the top of a mountain.

Louis is speak no evil

At the top of the overlook

We thought these koi were beautiful.  They had them at the ropeway station

We then turned around and walked the path back to our car.  We did a lot of walking, but the scenery was spectacular.  Our kids were pretty tired on the way back so we refueled them with grape ice cream.  This was a really beautiful area and we're glad we decided to do the whole thing.