Adventuriety
Our journey to Shangri-La began in Hutiaoxia or Tiger Leaping Gorge Town, where we pulled over in a busy parking area, hugged Denise good-bye and met Sarah amid cars honking and trying to back out of spaces and the couple that ran across the street to ask us about bus schedules and hiking…in Spanish. Scott and the kids were able to not only have a conversation, but...
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Adventuriety
This year has taught me that when we disembark on the tarmac it is usually a sign of impending good adventure. This was true in Tanzania, the Galapagos and now Lijiang in China’s Yunnan province. Yunnan is located in southwest China in the eastern part of the Himalayas, sharing a border with Burma, Laos, and Vietnam in the south and Tibet in the northwest. The...
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Adventuriety
We arrived in Xi’an on our seventh day in China. Even if you have no interest in China you’ve probably heard of Xi’an. No? What about the Terra Cotta Warriors? I thought so. Even my kids knew about the Terra Cotta Warriors and listed them as a reason for visiting China. Obviously, Xi’an is very popular on the Chinese tourist circuit because of the Terra Cotta...
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Adventuriety
Two and a half hours out of Beijing on a bullet train and there is still no sky visible. It looks like June gloom in Central California but it is smog, laying on the ground. Scott points outside and says to the kids, “See the pollution?” Grant replies, “I thought it was fog…are you sure?” It took us three and half hours to finally...
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Adventuriety
For me, being in China was like being on another planet, but a vaguely familiar planet. China is a very complicated place; a lot like an episode of Star Trek Voyager where past, present and future are all tangled together in some sort of Delta Quadrant wormhole. For those of you who are not Trekkies, suffice it to say that Beijing was our first taste...
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