I left early this morning, as the guy told me checkout time here is 9:30…he was a pretty serious fellow, all business. I left and stopped at the only grocery store in town called Ralse, a grocery store chain here in Hokkaido. It wasn’t open yet but there were people crowding around already waiting. Once it opened I went inside to look for breakfast. I found some big bread rolls and peanut cream and grape jelly. Peanut cream has a consistency of margarine, not thick like the American peanut butter. Knife cuts right through it and it pastes easily onto bread. I also bought milk…that was breakfast. One more day until I reach the cape, and the weather was looking good. It was warm again and not much wind blowing. The road was relatively flat up to the turnoff where I would head east over the mountain range towards the coast. Tomorrow I will head up the coast to the northern cape. I found a ryokan in Hamatonbetsu for the night.
The ride through the mountains wasn’t too bad, not many cars…few motorcyclists. I stopped at a roadside rest area for some hot soba noodles and sat with a family from Asahikawa out on a daytrip ride. We talked briefly and they wished me luck on the road ahead. I saw some deer along the side of the road which was pretty cool, it’s always nice to see something interesting no matter how small to take your mind of the redundancy of cycling through the same scenery. My afternoon break was at another roadside rest area, where I got my delicious soft serve ice cream on a cone…I’ve been eating these things nonstop and I am starting to worry about my arteries getting clogged. After a while I noticed a sign that said limestone grotto caves so I took a detour and headed there. The road was closed but snow had been cleared so I walked to the caves. Only one of them was open but it was pretty cool going inside. I got a bottle full of water dripping down from inside the cave and took a sip of it. I got sort of paranoid about it afterwards wondering if I’d catch a stomach bug or something but I am okay so far. I saw a snake on the road back from the grotto caves...just sitting in the road, pretty neat.
Eventually the road started heading downhill and into town. The wind was blowing really hard in town, luckily it was coming from the west giving me a slight tailwind push. I checked in and washed up then headed out to town to look for dinner. I found a grocery store and they had already started marking off stuff half off so I got a bunch of bentos for dinner. I stuffed myself full, and since there is no internet here in town I caught up on my blog writing. Tomorrow was the day I would reach Cape Soya.