Our first stop on the way was a small, but excellent reptile zoo. Full of snakes, turtles, frogs, lizards, and even a 3.9 meter crocodile, it was very hands on, and very well done. Though we did not understand any signs. A problem we do encounter often!
Loving the turtles!
Feeding the turtles
The crocodile was HUGE
Heading down the coast the coastline was beautiful
Next stop, Shirahama beach. A beautiful white sand beach almost completely empty. It was a relatively cool day in the mid 70's, but it was ideal to us and the kids played for hours in the warm surf, and built a small fort out of sticks and pretended to be shipwrecked.
Shirahama Beach
Brotherly love
Love the Torii Gates in Japan
photo courtesy of Molly
our little play area
shipwrecked
They could have stayed here for days...
Right next to the beach was a beautiful shrine that had a bright red bridge I just had to cross.
The trees here are reported to be 3000 years old, and frankly they looked it!
Tommy on the bridge
Dogashima, on the other side of the peninsula was our late afternoon stop, and we took a relaxing boat ride along the coast to see the neat rock formations and caves that are found here.
My adventure crew
Getting so big
We went in this cave, in the boat, boys loved it!
Our boat
It was time to head home, and heading up the coast back toward Tokyo, we were treated to beautiful views of Mount Fuji, and endless rice fields.
Emerging from the mist
terraced rice fields
Supper brought us to good old McDonalds, and we all tried the new sweet potato milkshake.
But when I told them what the flavor was...this is what happened!
Suddenly not so good.
I thought it was delicious!
Yum!
A long but AWESOME day!
can't believe you packed that much into one day! looks utterly gorgeous though, and the shipwreck is awesome. something about deserted beaches that makes it nearly impossible to leave, no?
ReplyDeleteBeautiful!
ReplyDelete