Tokyo Bay and Mt Nokogiri

 On black Friday we did do some shopping at the Dirty Dish, our favorite Japanese dish store.  That finished up our Christmas shopping.  But our true destination was Mt Nokogiri in Chiba.  From all the reviews online the hike looked amazing and I had been looking forward to getting out hiking again after being so pregnant.  The mountain did not disappoint.  Even with many things closed because of COVID, the hiking trails were lovely and the quarries were epic (I mean they looked like they were Lord of the Rings worthy).

The boys at the top of Mt Nokogiri

There was a heart carved into one of the smaller quarry sections

A fun narrow section

A view from the top

One of the boys took this picture and their finger slipped in, but this picture is pure bliss to me.  Hiking with my happy boys.  Look at that happy face on Louis in such a beautiful place on God's great earth.

You can't really tell the magnitude of these mines, but they are mammoth.  It really made it feel like there was an ancient dwarf civilization that lived here.

We made it back to our car right before sunset

We picked up dinner at 7-11 (a Japanese classic choice).  And then headed home on what we thought would be a 2 hour drive.  It ended up being 4 hours, and our kids did not appreciate missing their bedtime (who knew they care so much about going to bed).  There was a lot of crying and yelling.  At one point Grant was bawling and telling us we wouldn't make it home before the sun came out in the morning (this was at 7 pm).  He also told us he was going to get cavities because he hadn't brushed his teeth.  It was a rough drive, but Jake and I literally laughed out loud when Grant made his comments.

I failed to mention earlier that on the way out we stopped at the rest area in the middle of Tokyo Bay.  We had heard it was pretty cool.  And it did end up being a fun stop.