September 19, 2025
Day 17 — Lake Toya to Okishi
Marilee here.
The campground at Lake Toya was so nice, we weren’t in a big hurry to leave the next morning. Eventually what got us moving though was the need for some breakfast. The side of the lake we’d camped on had no town or stores, so we breakfasted on peanuts and a power bar, all we had left rattling around at the bottom of our empty food bag. That would have to be enough to power us for the short ride to the next town on the lakeshore.
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It was a pleasant ride along very quiet, sun-dappled roads through the woods, hugging the lakeshore to the next town. We gathered ourselves quite a feast at the Seicomart and took it to a picnic table overlooking the lake to devour it all, sitting in the sunshine. And we had a FaceTime birthday call with our son Jackson — him in a tree planting camp on a mountainside in BC, us at tiny lakeside village in Japan— what an age of communication miracles we live in.
After the busy highway and tunnels of the day before, we were hoping to spend as much time as possible today on side roads. This worked out really well all morning long, which we spent crisscrossing farmland, up and down rolling hills and dales.
For much of the day we were riding either towards or away from (but in either case, under the looming shadow of) a massive building towering at the top of the very highest peak around the lake. Much speculation ensued about what the heck it was, which Google solved for us eventually. A luxury hotel which hosted a G8 summit in the early 2000’s. Way more fun to imagine some nefarious purpose to the building:
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The afternoon’s ride threatened to take us back onto the highway, and we suspected that there would be tunnels, so we devised a backroads workaround route that involved a significant amount of climbing, but would keep us on quiet roads longer. We were right about the climbing! It was sweaty work, but worthwhile for the views at the top.
However, when we zoomed back to the highway, down a thrilling long descent, it turned out we’d taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and our detour had only resulted in us avoiding a few hundred meters of highway! The route map at the bottom of the post illustrates the not-very useful extra miles we rode. Oh well, they were very scenic extra miles.
There were indeed a couple of tunnels between us and our destination for the night, but they were thankfully fairly short. So it was just getting to mid-afternoon when we rolled into Ogishi Seaside Campsite, to be greeted by a very unusual sign.
The campground was along a beautiful little bay, with a fine sand beach, bordered by rocky outcroppings at either side. It was a perfect spot for a swim, and I jumped in as soon as we’d set up camp. The water by Canadian ocean standards was really warm, and I continue to be mystified as to why there isn’t more swimming happening here in Hokkaido. The other campers were either fishing or grilling fish.
What we realized shortly after arriving and setting up the tent was that this idyllic-looking bay had one shortcoming: a train line running just behind the campground, from a tunnel on the east side to a tunnel on the west side, just a few hundred meters further. And, as a safety measure, every time a train approached a warning signal was triggered — a long series of loud beep-beep-beep-get-out-of-the-tunnel-a-train’s-coming-beep-beep-BEEEEEPs! Oh dear. We dug out the earplugs that we’d brought along and hoped that maybe the trains didn’t run at night.
Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 864 km (537 miles)
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