China - Part 2 - The Great Wall

For part deux of our photo blog series of our trip, we're focusing on the Great Wall. It was captivating, mesmerizing, scary, awe-inspiring, daunting and probably 1000 other things as well.


Above all now that we're home safe and sound, it's a great memory! Let's get started, shall we?

This is a shot as you're leaving the highway on an offramp into the Great Wall parking lots.  There are multiple parking lots to house all of the buses for tourist groups as well as personal vehicles now that Chinese peeps are purchasing vehicles. If you look real closely at the photo, you'll notice the building at the top of the nearest peak. The wall goes up to that and you can see it, just barely through the fog, smog and snow of the morning, on the hill to the back left.

Another shot from the bus as we're entering the parking lot.  My guess is that this photo would have been far more spectacular if it were not for the aforementioned fog, smog and snow that was falling this fine morning in Beijing.

This is a shot from the first part of climbing the wall where you can see the parking areas... or at least a small portion of them.  That's the highway that we drove in on in the very bottom left corner of the photo. Take special note of the little "hut" looking things on the tops of the hills in the background. Those are the lookout points along that section of the Great Wall.  We didn't climb that side but if we had another six or seven hours there, we may have.

Our "official" family photo as we were preparing our ascent!  Notice that we all appear to be breathing easily yet at this point!  This is on the section I talked about in the earlier post about it being slanted and me not being able to get any traction with my likely Chinese-made-but-American-purchased shoes.  Notice the wall going up the upper left quadrant of the photo and the little "huts" that you can see on top of the hills behind us.  That's where we meet our doom...

I must admit at this point that I really don't know what this is...  It appears to be a small town based off of what I would have said was the North side of the wall, which wouldn't make much sense. The Chinese were most commonly attacked from the North side of the wall so it wouldn't make sense to have a town there, unless it was built much later than the wall itself. Regardless, there are some living quarters and temples and whatever else in this conglomeration of buildings.

This is Robby and myself on the slanted upslope portion of the wall where I could scarcely gain any traction.  I figured that with the wall to fall over the edge so low, that I should hang on to Robby's hand in a haphazard fashion so that when I fell over the side, I would not drag him with me.  Looking at these pictures and talking with my bride, it would be delightful to do this climb again in a warmer climate so a fella could look up while walking and to do so without the imminent face of death staring at me like a dog who really needs to go outside to pee!

This is a good distance up the staircase on the side of the mountain.  It's the first resting point that you reach and many, meaning most, of the people climbing turn around at this point.  You can see the wall portion that we've climbed in the lower right corner with the parking lot, highway, town and gift shops down below.

Should climbing the steps up the side of the mountain not be exciting enough for you, you could go into the town and climb the "donkey walking path" to the top as well.  That's the zig-zaggy line you see in the middle of photo. No thanks.

This is a little better shot to show everybody what we've just climbed.  The whole way up the mountain had me thinking about Robby's safety on the way back down. I have to be honest here. It was hard to enjoy the climb while thinking about our imminent deaths.  Parts of me were wishing we didn't agree to do this to begin with as I didn't plan to go to China to DIE a few days before we would meet our new family member.

Robby and I are on top of the first "hut" in this photo. It is a little better representation of the climb.

This is our family portrait on top of the "hut".  We didn't go any further up as we knew we had to go back down.

Mr. Robert in his Hillis Elementary t-shirt!  I wish we would have taken a better photo of him with the wall in the background but I was seriously concerned about us dying on the way down. Not kidding...

This is also from the top of the first "hut".  It's looking up to the point(s) where we could climb next if we did indeed have a death wish.  I sincerely desire another chance to climb the wall and would do it during the summer when the skies would be clearer.  It was a sight to behold but would be better if you didn't think of dying constantly.

This is me sort of hanging over the edge of the wall to get a shot representing how far a fella would fall should he hang over the edge too far.  Trust me when I say the picture doesn't do it justice...

This is out of one of the windows of the "hut".  The gray lines you can see on the ground to the left of the base of the wall is electrical conduit.  There's equally as much conduit on the other side of the wall too. What for??  I don't know. When you look at this photo, try to imagine how many dead Chinese men are buried in this section of the wall.  You see, they used the bodies of the men who died during construction as "filler" in the base of the wall.  They like to call it "The Worlds Longest Tomb" but having been raised in America and realizing the importance of maximizing profits, I'm pretty sure they were thought of as filler and not much more. I could be wrong...

Somewhat ironic since you do not encounter this sign until you're better than halfway up.  Such kidders...

This was snapped just outside of the "hut" as I was preparing my descent with Robby.  I figured it might be the last picture I ever took so it had better be a pretty good representation of how I died.  I think it is.

We lived!!  We're back down at the cafe's and gift shops at the bottom. 

I'm not really sure what Robby and I are standing in front of at this point. It's by the gift shops and appears to be a display of some of the weapons that they either fought off intruders with or confiscated from said intruders as they introduced them to their demise.  There was a sign but it was written in Mandarin, which I am a little rusty on...