Camping at Lake Ashinoko

Josh and I enjoyed a beautiful Memorial Day weekend in Hakone National Park. It was so crazy to think that for most of my life I had spent this weekend traveling to "the cottage" (my family's cottage on the Sassafras River in Maryland) - and NOW how sort of normal it seemed to be driving to the foothills of Mt. Fuji for the same long holiday weekend! (never could have seen that coming!)

We were able to pack up our things and head off by mid-morning on Saturday and arrived at Lake Ashi in the early afternoon. It was a very scenic drive (though it was very traffic-filled too) and very easy to figure out, so we were glad for that.
The campsite was right on the water and we had easy access a cooking area and bathroom. We chose the cheapest of the sites that they offered, so we were quite pleased to find these amenities. (The cabins there cost about $300 per night and the campsites where you can drive your car and park right beside your test cost about $70 - it cost us about $15 for our site because we had to park our car and pull our things in a cart for about 200 meters! Thanks Josh!)

Well, we set up camp and decided to head out for a short hike before it got dark. Unfortunately, all the hikes in the area included lots of steep ups and downs, but Josh was wonderfully patient with me while I took little breaks to catch my breath from time to time! (yeah, yeah, I'm totally blaming that on being 32 weeks pregnant!) This first night we ended up hiking up from the lake to the ridge line where we could see the whole valley on one side and Mt. Fuji on the other side - it was beautiful!
We returned to the campsite and made some dinner and then headed to bed - for a cool and quite comfy night of sleep in the great outdoors!

On Sunday morning we got up and prepped for the day of hiking that we had planned out. We took a cable car to the top of Mt. Kamagatake and began our trek from there. One of the coolest things we got to see was the 50K race that was happening all around the lake. From our camp site to the top of the area's highest peak, our path crossed with the racers all day long! I can't even imagine how they made it that far while passing up, down, over, and through such difficult terrain (though I must say that a high percentage of them managed to oooh, and ahhh at my large stomach as they passed..so I guess I impressed them too!)

We ended up hiking a 10K loop which took us along several ridge lines, through a cedar forest, past a "sulphurous vapor erupting" area (boy, did that smell bad!), and up Mt. Kami - the highest peak in the area. The only bad part of the whole day was when Josh pointed out to me that we had ONLY 30 minutes to hike the last part of our trip and STILL make the last cable car down to the station. YIKES!!!! How we made it back to the station with 15 minutes to spare, I will never know...but, wow, were we thankful!! We arrived back at the station at about 5:30 and decided that we would take the scenic Hakone Skyline Driveway to catch some views of Mt. Fuji while the sun was setting. As it turns out, Mt. Fuji is only clearly visible a few days a year, so we mostly just got glimpses of its silhouette - but it was still quite impressive.

It was a great weekend with wonderful weather and amazing scenery. Wish you could have been there!