Picnic!

One of the things that Audrey and I liked to do during this summer and fall was to ride our bikes around Yonezawa.  One weekend we got real brave and rode about 15 kilometers out to a mountain stream that Audrey and I knew about to have a picnic.

The path into the mountains goes through some beautiful stands of cedar trees.

I think this is out of "Little Red Riding Hood".  It fits, doesn't it?....little Audrey, wearing red, riding her bike through the big forest!  Watch out for the wolf taking the picture!

The road to the place where we had our picnic crosses over the shinkansen line between Fukushima and Yonezawa.  Here is the Yamagata Shinkansen coming out of a tunnel on its way to Fukushima.

Here's a little friend we met while waiting for the train to come by.  The skies are full of dragonflies at the end of the summer.

Finally, we got to our picnic spot alongside a mountain stream.  Close by to this area in March we saw several native snow monkeys.  Unfortunately, we did not see any this day.

The water in the stream was very cold.  This deep pool would have made a great swimming hole during the hot summer!

After a great picnic we biked home and along the way stopped and looked at the gardens that many people had.

Here's one of the bigger gardens that we saw.  It looks like many hours were spent tending to this garden!

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