Distance: 206km
Sunday was a bit of an uneventful day. We rose early, ate Japanese breakfast at the Cosmic Inn in Shosanbetsu, and quickly got on the road as we were worried about making it back to Sapporo in good time to return our car and for Sonomi to make her train back to Aomori. Lindsay took the first shift behind the wheel and wound up driving us all the way back to Ishikari as we made surprisingly good time. Maybe it was all of our experience from having large distances to cover in little time over the past 8 days, or maybe it was Sonomi's hypnotizing soundtrack of This American Life that kept us rolling smoothly and making good time. Or maybe it was the fact that this was the section of the road trip with which Mark, Lindsay, and I were most familiar as we'd driven up this same road last September, then back down it to Sapporo on a similarly perfect Sunday.
We didn't have anything of note planned for the Sunday, and that was a good thing because we didn't seem to run into anything of note on the drive home. There was sun and there was clouds as we drove down the coast and the flat of Sarobetsu from the previous day built back up into the rocky sea cliffs of the south-west, and, over all, it was a good day for driving. We tried to hold on to the last of our holiday and the last of our epic adventure, but as we got closer and closer to Sapporo, Real Life seemed to loom ever larger in our thoughts, pushing out all the carefree and leaving only the promise of Monday. Faced with the prospect of returning to our day-to-days tomorrow, the exhaustion of the last nine days finally caught up with us. When we made ridiculously good time and finally said goodbye in Sapporo just after 1pm, I think all any of us wanted to do was get home, get changed, and get into bed.
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