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| 7 November 2005 - Oriase Gorge |
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| Took a drive to Oriase Gorge to see the fall colors before
old man winter shows up. Oriase Gorge was carved out by the river
flowing out from Lake Towada. It is a slow but easy 45 minute drive
southwest from Misawa. It is only about 15 miles away, but no direct
way to get there - the roads here wind like a river. But even before
we reached the gorge, we enjoyed all the fall foliage along the route. |
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| After leaving the town of Towada, you enter the gorge.
As the sign below says, it is a 14.2km long road that winds along the river,
passing beautiful scenery, waterfalls, rocks, and lots of tourists. At
its entrance to the gorge is a great looking hotel and onsen. |
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Map of gorge, surprisingly not a cartoon map
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In front of the hotel
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| The road into the gorge. As you can kinda see, it is a
two lane road that really has no shoulder except for the occasional dirt
patch parking shoulder, some of which were very narrow. But, when
someone wanted to get out and take a photo or walk along the river, they
would just park their cars there right on the tiny shoulder...you would have
to wait till no one was coming the other way, and get around them. |
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| Some of my favorite photos from the area are the ones we
took while the car was moving - Fun to see the motion in the photos |
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| Playing by the river |
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Notice Trusty Yellow Camera Bag
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| This sign for sure said stay on trail and out of roped off
area - but there was a really cool waterfall over there, so of course we ran
over |
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| Now we start getting to the tall, slender waterfalls.
There were a few of them along the way. |
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| Five angles of one of the falls. |
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| My favorite as it is the most photogenic. And no one
was walking across the street from one of the more popular waterfalls to
come take pictures of it. You probably feel bad for the waterfall?
That is stupid. The waterfall has no feelings, and it made it easier
for me to take my pictures... |
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| This was the largest and most popular waterfall on the
river. |
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Slow Shutter - water seems moving
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Fast shutter - see drops of water
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| Fluid Dynamics 101 |
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| At the end of the 14.2km, you come out at Lake Towada.
It is a beautiful lake - I am pretty sure it is an old crater filled up with
water. As such, it is pretty deep. As the sign below says, "
Winters at Lake Towada are very cold, at times it gets to -20C (5F).
However, the Lake is never freezes over. Lake Towada is deep, the
deepest part is 327 meters, so the so the temperature of the lake never gets
low enough to freeze over before spring comes. (Yes, there are two so
the so the on the sign...) |
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| You can circle the island on a ferry boat. That will
be the next trip. |
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