Some R&R

Saturday we had an amazing day doing something completely different. We were invited by Lindsay's foster family to spend a day in a nearby national park. This place, Yuntai Mountain, is incredible, and even more so because it is only about an hour from Jiaozuo. Sadly, the amount of air pollution we have here means that these HUGE mountains are rarely visible from the city just 40 or so miles away.

While I expected it to be interesting, I was really struck by how much the mountains, valleys and waterfalls reminded me of Yosemite...probably my favorite place on earth. Even Marissa noted the domes and pinnacles that reminded us of Half Dome (on a smaller scale) and the Sentinel Peaks. This valley was much more closed than Yosemite Valley so really no meadows to speak of. But the mountain streams and seemingly unending cascades were beautiful. The waterfalls were flowing far more than I expected so early in the spring and in a time of severe drought.

The first valley we hiked through is a natural habitat for macaques (monkeys). How wild (truly) was that to see these little monkeys. They often seemed to be following us, just off the trail.
Several hours flew by and it was time for lunch, provided by our hosts. Picnic China style! It was great...they had my favorite round breads, beef, chicken, vegetables and spices, and chopsticks, of course. All very fresh and delicious. First they put down a plastic sheet to serve as our table, then handed out sheets of newspaper for sitting on. After lunch it took just a minute to roll it all up and throw away...very smart.

We ate next to the main stream through this part of the mountains and watched people poling around in the stream. That's right *poling around* not fooling around. You could rent floating bamboo platforms and a couple of bamboo poles to move and steer. We even saw a few splashing contests.

After lunch we hiked another valley, this one had a stream through it and every 50 meters or so there was another waterfall or cascade.

The sides of the valley were close and steep. We did a lot of climbing. Almost all of it was stairs. (Probably not my favorite part, even Lindsay my go-go girl was pretty worn out.) It was really a great experience, and so wonderful to get out of the city for a day. Communication with Lindsay's foster family isn't too easy. Even with a translator it's hard to get a real conversation going. But I hope they enjoyed the day as much as we did. Sadly both Lindsay and I had problems with batteries in our cameras (Chinese batteries just don't last in electronics) so we have very few photos. But lots of great memories.