vacation: day on the mountain

in the morning, after our rationed breakfast and sorting through our food and dividing the rest of our rations among us, we set off to hike around whatever parts of the mountain we could for the day before we had to catch the cable car down the mountain by 4:30 when it closed so that we could get our overnight train that evening (no more missing trains allowed!!!!).

charis and i thoroughly enjoyed the haw that we purposefully saved for hiking instead of indulging in it the night before.

there were amazingly gorgeous views and it was a beautiful clear day.

we refused to accept that all the paths were paved with stairs and proceeded to go "off roading" multiple times. we were definitely rewarded with some great paths and some time away from eyes of hundreds (thousands?) of chinese tourists on the mountains watching the foreigners and some fun places to hang out.

charis's tripod never fails to include all people in a group in a lovely photo. =)

this is another thing we escaped by "off roading"--people taking pictures of us from a distance.
we zoomed in on this guy and took a picture of him taking a picture of us!

we found this rock formation on one of our "off roading" excursions. we called it the praying hands.

with alissa!!

another thing that took place as a result of off roading was a terrible awfully painful head injury that occurred while a certain person was running up a path between trees and misjudged the distance between his head and a tree branch.

we administered first aid as best we could.

oh the pain was excruciating and we all grimaced and swooned and empathized at the thought.

yeah, he was really fine. it just bled a lot because it was on his head, but was barely injured at all.

soooo back on the paved paths, this was a somewhat regular sight:
since the paved paths are the only way to transport supplies to the hotels, once they are brought up the cable cars, men with these poles carrying ridiculously heavy loads will be seen walking all over the mountains. once you go up the cable cars, there are no more roads of any kind, but there are still a bunch of hotels up there (why, chinese people, can't we go camping on the mountain?? why???).

another regular sight:
incredibly beautiful views with crowds and crowds of people viewing them and being a part of the view. so...strange... going to the mountain is not a time of "getting away" and/or "being in nature." i'm not sure exactly what it is, but it definitely involves being a part of a group of people, and being guided through an unknown place. there's got to be so much more to say about this, but the mindset about just why you would go to a mountain and who you would want to go with and what you would want to do there is very different for chinese people. i'm not sure that i can describe it or that i understand it well enough yet to try.

somewhat near the end of our day, we happened to be at a small overlook point off of a path when some mist rolled in from *under* us and moved up and across the rock formations we had been standing there looking at. we stood there and watch the mist move and cover the view we had just been watching, and it was pretty amazing. plus off in the other direction, it was completely sunny and clear, but in this one area, mist rose from below us, moved up higher than us, but never actually came towards us...

also, one rock formation near there looked like a foot.
well, after awhile us crazy people took a rest along the paven path.

at the very last path we actually took a destination to before heading back to the cable car, we saw a yellow chinese tourist hat that had blown over the railing and had not been rescued. it's owner had clearly left it for lost, so through some strange feats, we rescued it.
the hat, as far as i know, has now traveled around the world to wisconsin.

well, yellow mountain is a beautiful place!!! and i will tell you the story of the end of our journey another day, hopefully sooner than this post came after the last one. and then after that, you still have a few more stories from my summer to look forward to. =) and then after that, who knows, there may be some new stories from *another* trip to beijing that i am taking this coming weekend for a work conference. we shall see!

do know that everyday life is just everyday life though, with it's routines and ups and downs... lately on this blog you are getting all the exciting stories, but don't get the idea that that is all that life is like here! i will have to supplement with other posts sometime too...hmm.