China Post #13 Great Wall

After visiting Olympic Park we headed out to that great big long stone barrier. Xiaowei took us to a less traveled section of the wall and even though it was a beautiful day there was nothing that could be considered a crowd. Naturally there is a little village right were you access the wall and Xiaowei called ahead and had some chinese pancakes cooked and ready for us when we got there at one of the restaurants. After a quick snack we headed across a river and paid 2 nominal fees to cross some farmers land and were on the wall. It is really impressive...I probably did not need to mention that. It's incredible that the Chinese built a 4000-4500 mile long wall in just a couple hundred years.

The area we were in in was quite mountainous and the wall climbed, descended and weaved through the terrain. The section we were on headed mostly up for a pretty good ways then had a saddle and a quick drop to a really long climb, of course beyond the saddle the wall had not been cleaned up or maintained so things were a bit more interesting the further out one walked. Here is a view looking down towards the valley from were we started, this is actually where we first got on the wall.

Here is Dylan and I heading up...
and the whole family continuing UP...
A view looking out past the first high point, out of the frame to the left to the really high point more to the right.
From where the last picture was taken in the saddle Linda, Dylan and I headed across the hillside on a trail to make a loop and hike a longer section of the wall without having to go up twice. As we headed off through the low trees we heard some yelling and turned to see a guy charging down the wall from our previous high point before the saddle. It was an amazing display of speed, balance and agility coming down the steps and smooth surface along the top of the wall in smooth sole slippers. He wanted to collect a small fee for crossing, maybe, his land. Once we dealt with that we worked out way across and got onto the wall where it looked like this.
That was shot right where Dylan and I got back on, while Linda headed down a bit further towards the low point. This is what it looked like heading back up.
Here is a panoramic shot from the lower of the high points.
As Dylan and I headed down from the high point to complete our loop, we were confronted by this really steep section that some people were reduced to crawling up.
Looking out from one of the towers back up towards the high point.
Linda coming down that really steep section after she finished her loop.
Here is where we had lunch after hiking on the Great Wall for a few hours. Not a bad view.
After the wall we headed back into Beijing to see the Flying Acrobat Show. It was sort of like Circ'us Ole in Las Vegas. Some of the stuff the guys and girls do is pretty amazing but both Linda and I were disappointed in the choreography and timing, were could easily see everyone doing the same thing, mostly, but off by a second or two. It was worth while though because Dylan was in a trance through the whole thing.