Madre Chronicles

From Kanazawa, we headed to Senmaida also known as a thousand rice fields flowing into the Sea of Japan. We took a whole day traveling to Wajima, a large city located by Senmaida, so that we coul...

Mom found the Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage on the National Geographic website. After the Onaida Nature Trail I was a little hesitant to go on another Japanese hike, but since National Geographic recomm...

We went from an ancient rugged rain forest to an automobile factory in Toyota. It’s named after the Toyoda family which owns Toyota. Mom found a sign out by the water fountain that said “this is ...

The portion of Onaida Nature Trail  we went on was under the forest canopy the entire way except at the very end where I was surrounded by misty clouds and amazing ancient trees! Although lonely ...

Nara, a little town outside of Kyoto, was one of the few places that we saw a lot of other international tourists. We were all there for the same reason, to feed the famous deer. I believe that t...

Traveling from Seattle, WA to Tokyo was strange enough all by itself, but then to make it all the way to Kyoto in the same week, going from one great experience to another, and another. I just ca...

I peered over the edge to see how clear the water was below.  A slight mist of water on the rock made my footing like butter! I slipped, fell, and was about to involuntarily take my turn over the...

Before setting out on this venture, we had expected to thrash through a lush rainforest filled with howler monkeys and venom dripping vipers. We would blaze a trail and defeat any obstacle standi...

We hadn't done much research, we just knew we wanted to find it. Word was that Somoto Canyon had been relatively unexplored until 2004, and since then, tourism to this magnificent secret world wo...