Hiji Falls

The three of us made it! Now, who's going to carry me back to the car? :)

We drove up north to hike the Hiji Falls woods trail and bask in the beauty of the great outdoors Sunday.  We weren't sure what we were in for, but were all looking forward to the hike.  Stopped at the restaurant in front of the park for some yummy curry rice and yakisoba before we set out on the trail.

The trail itself is one of the most well-maintained woods trails I've ever hiked!  Might have to do with the number of hikers (including many, many school groups) they have year round and the fact that there is a small fee to enter the park.  I loved being back out in the woods again.  Didn't realize just how much I missed it until we were surrounded by trees and a creek.  Gorgeous!  (When we get back to PA next, Brandon and I definitely have to go for a woods-walk!)  I'm not sure I'd want to hike the trail here when it gets much warmer - we were quite happy with the 70F temperature.  Took us about 45 minutes to hike to the falls and about the same to hike back.  We did stop a few times to let people go around us (we took A LOT of photos) or come up/down the stairs.  And speaking of stairs - boy, oh, boy were there a lot of stairs!  I think I saw stairs in my sleep that night.

Every time we passed fellow hikers, we'd all greet each other with a happy "Konnichiwa!"  People stopped to gawk at the boys' height occasionally and some of the school kids tried out their English "Hello" on us.  We laughed a lot, decided if we ever hike Hiji again we're counting the number of stairs, and had a very nice day together.

---Arielle