Autumn in Nasu - 那須の紅葉

カミさんの旅行仲間が那須のメンバー宅に集まるというので、紅葉散策を兼ねて一泊旅行することになった。宿泊はハイランドパークに隣接するピュアコテージ[*1]をじゃらんの格安プランで見つけたが、これが思いの外良かった。2ベッドルームとリビングにキチネットも付いているので、家族連れには持っていこいで、ハイランドパークへも入場自由だった。温泉は土色の柔らかな湯で、含ラドンとのこと。夕食は和食を選んだらこれが当たりで、食材としては気張らずに、但し美味しく調理された会席コースとなっており、宿泊代金を考えると大サービスしてもらった気分だ。
今年の紅葉は猛暑でどうなるかと思ったが、見事に鮮やかな紅が目に心地良い。僕らは静かな別荘地を東京建物のフォレストヒルズまでたっぷり散歩した。[*2,3]
翌日は塩原温泉ルートを端から端までドライブし、紅葉谷[*4]大吊り橋にも立ち寄ったが、全体として山は茶焼けた感じで猛暑の影響を感じさせた。見頃の時期がもう少し後なのかも知れない。むしろ紅葉は那須の南ヶ丘牧場からサファリパークに通じるコースが見応えがあり、混雑とも無縁だった。





My wife's travel friends were to gather in one of the members’ house in Nasu, and I decided to join as part of our 2-day trip to watch autumn colors in Nasu. We luckily found a bargain package of lodging in a tour agent's site that was located next to Nasu Highland Amusement Park. The Pure Cottage (photo 1) was quite satisfying, much more so than our expectation, with 2 bedrooms and a living room with kitchenette, a perfect facility for family tourism, and the entry to the amusement park is waved. The hot springs water was mild in sand color and it contained radon. For the dinner, we chose the Japanese menu, and it was right. They wisely avoided exotic ingredients but prepared very delicious dishes of a Kaiseki course, and considering the overall package price, we could only praise their effort.

We were wondering how this year's autumn leaves look like after the record-breaking hot summer, but we saw some trees with astoundingly red color to amuse our eyes. We had a long walk along the streets of quiet weekend houses up to the area called Forest Hills developed by Tokyo Tatemono (photos 2 & 3).

The following day, we drove all the way of Shiobara hot springs end to end including Momijidani (photo 4), but the mountains looked as if baked more brownish than reddish perhaps because of too hot summer or the best timing comes late this year. As for the red leaves, the road from Minamigaoka Farm to Safari Park in Nasu was more impressive and also no slow traffic.