Kintai Bridge

Did I mention my mom arrived safe and sound??  We are so happy to have her here!  Today, to get some sightseeing in, we decided to head out to the Kintai Bridge that is in Iwakuni.  It was the most beautiful, perfect day to go.  

Not only was there not a single cloud in the sky, the Maple Tree leaves are all sorts of beautiful colors.  We mostly saw this beautiful bright red and orange.  Just take a minute, soak that beauty in.  Fall.

 We didn't make the hike up to the castle, but there was so much more to the area than I had thought there was.  When we pulled up, we had some corn, meat on a stick, cooked by a blow torch.  This made me all huh? But I didn't ask any questions.  It was so good.  Then, we ate rice balls dipped in some sweet sauce warmed by hot stones.  The taste of these were very good, and since we didn't exactly know that they were rice balls at first, we were kind of put off by their doughy, sticky inside.  We thought they were some kind of potato like we had eaten in Miya Jima.  Good, but not quite the same.  We also got a baggie of oranges for 350 yen since Pumpkin has a new found love for them.  After we walked across the bridge, we saw 2 or 3 different ice cream shops, and decided to grab some from the one that has 100 flavors and my mom had heard of it.  When we walked up, they handed us an english menu ( I wonder how they knew..) We ended up getting plain vanilla ( Red), Satsuma Orange( Mom), and Iwakuni Chestnut ( me ). Then, we all had a taste of each other's- It was wonderful!  So yummy, even Ava enjoyed all of the different flavors!  They had flavors from green tea, to hershey's chocolate, to soybean!  Then, we walked around to the Rare White Snake exhibit, which included about 3 or 4 of these horrible looking long, slithery snakes piled on top of each other and a bunch of spine- shivering long skins in cases that belonged to one of those things at one time.  Apparently, this part of Japan is known for these rare white snakes.  Yay.

As we wondered around, we went to a few different little areas, we came up on something that looked like a shrine, but we didn't go into it.  We did wander up a small trail and ran into this small park with a little pond and water fall.

 Then, we let pumpkin loose!  She loved it out there,  wild and free.  She chased a couple of pigeons and just had fun running around and playing with who ever was fencing her in at the moment.

 

All in all, it was a wonderful, peaceful, beautiful time.   I can't wait for the spring time when the cherry blossoms bloom and fill the air!  I want to go out there and have a picnic every day!  I absolutely loved it, and I hope pumpkin will grow up loving it too.  

Oh yeah, our house rented out in North Carolina!

"Guess what Lieutenant Dan?  We ain't gotta worry about money no more.  That's good, one less thang."

Ok, so we don't have to worry about our mortgage any more, but we still have to worry about money.  Darn it.