vacation: the great wall

our second day in beijing, we ate breakfast at the hotel and then took an hour or so long ride in our van to the second most popular section of the great wall, recommended by our driver so that there would be less people. here we prepare for our trek up the great wall. i have no idea.

we took a cable car up to a certain part of the wall so we wouldn't have to walk all the way up there.

it was a really foggy day, so there were probably a lot less people than there may have been otherwise. so that is good. and the fog meant that it was much less hot than it could have been on the great wall in july. but it also meant that our view of the great wall would be limited.
so i have quite a few pictures of us hanging out on the great wall, but nearly no pictures of the scenery around the great wall or anything that shows how the great wall is built along the mountain. so if i am ever an explorer (i tried to convince our youngest fellow traveler that we were explorers, not tourists, but he didn't buy it) in beijing again, i would go to the great wall again, if it was a clear day. however, all the other places we went (which will be discussed in the future), i would not visit again--once is enough!

there were cannons at various points along the way as we hiked along the great wall.
here our youngest traveling companion (explorer, of course) examines one.

this picture actually shows some of the great wall, just not very much of it at once.

it was amusing to sit or stand in or take pictures involving different parts of the wall, since we could only see what was pretty much directly in front of us at the time.

i liked all the arches and thinking about how they would've been constructed was interesting.

an offshoot of the main part of the wall, seen through an arch.

and a great sign for your amusement. it's best if you read it in a funny, but serious voice.
i don't know why i think this one is so hilarious.

we walked for a long time on the wall, and let me tell you, there are LOTS of stairs. and these stairs are not even stairs either, they are all different widths and heights. it could become kind of a game to see how many stairs are the correct amount to go up or down at once.
we hiked almost 10 kilometers that day, and for some reason everyone in our group thought it necessary to hike all the way to the end of the section of the wall we were traversing, which meant we would have to hike all the way back to the cable car too. this walking the great wall is up and down stairs all the way too, as i already mentioned, or just steep slopes. the great wall is crazy! so at one point, we reached a certain stretch of stairs that just went up and up and up...or seemed to. we could only see so much in the fog.
but i figured, since most of the parts of the wall we'd seen so far looked similar, by hiking up all those stairs, i wasn't going to see anything much different. so i lay down on the stairs to take a nap and wait for everyone else to do that last stretch on their own. the great wall stairs are actually quite comfortable, in case you wonder. just a have a backpack for a pillow. but while i was laying there, i discovered something about the acoustics of the great wall that i thought was pretty interesting. every now and then, there would be another couple of people walking up or down the stairs, and i would hear their footsteps. but from my position laying down on the stairs, the footsteps echoed in the strangest sort of way, and it was impossible to tell what direction they were coming from, it was like there were footsteps all around me, but the people making them could have been quite a bit below me on the stairs still, barely visible in the fog. plus the echoes sounded like frogs croaking or something like that. at first i thought there were some strange crickets in the trees next to the wall or frogs down there or something. it started raining while i was waiting, so i put on my raincoat and kept "sleeping." eventually when people came back down and i joined them, i tried to tell them about the great wall acoustics, but they weren't much interested. i guess you had to hear for yourself. strange to lay alone on this ancient wall with this sound i can still hear distinctly in my mind. i wonder if when the great wall was built, they did that on purpose, or if it just turned out to be that way.