China episode 3 -- Lao Shan and hot springs

For the most part, we have been hanging out around Sharon's home town, visiting family and doing local stuff in the town and city. We really wanted to get and out do one big trip, and I'm glad we were able to make it happen.

There is a large mountain range about 3 hours from Sharon's house. It's unique because it's right on the coast. I believe it's the highest mountain range in all of China that is right next to the ocean. It's also a national park. It's about an hour away from a large coastal city of ~5-8 million called Qingdao (where we flew into), which is most famous internationally for it's Tsingdao beer.

We drove with Sharon's mom, one of her mom's younger sisters (called "3rd Aunt"), and her cousin ChaoChao and his wife XiaoQian. I think people went with us to try and help us out and be a guide, and Sharon's mom even called in a friend's husband from QingDao to meet us on the road and escort us to the mountain. This sort of highlights an interesting part of Chinese culture, calling in favors to get things done and hesitance to go out and do things independantly. It was all a very nice gesture and it was great to have Sharon's mom and aunt there to help with the kids. It also got to be a headache at times not being able to be independant, but that's OK.

It was nice that Nokia maps works on my phone here. I took screen shots of our route home.

Here's the first hotel we stayed in. We all squeezed into a suite with 6 twin beds for $60 a night.

On our way to our first hike

National parks are very expensive in China. This one had a daily entrance fee of 90 Chinese dollars, or over $15 US for anyone over 1.1 meters tall. It's also common for there to be large discounts for tour groups. Someone on the street sold us a package deal, or so we thought. Turns out we were escorted on some rough trails through a side entrance of the park that the vendors and peddlers use to bypass the main entrance.

Climbing up the stairs with the other vendors

 We finally got to the real park, which was meticulously paved with cement and granite.

This park had a loop which we tried to do, but the elevation was larger than we expected. We were short on daylight and water and had to head back. Enoch climbed a ton of elevation all by himself.

Michael got tired and threw a tantrum

The next day we drove under the mountain via a large tunnel and then around to the other side of the park to a site called Yang Kou. This side faced the ocean. Michael was tired and elected to stay with Sharon's mom and aunt, and it ended up just being Enoch, Sharon, and me that went hiking. I hope Enoch remembers his special day hiking alone with mom and dad in China.

We bought tickets for the chair lift for $5 per adult. We were all tired from the day before and it was well worth it.

This is the character Shou, which means long life

Top of the chairlift, about halfway up the mountain

The trail ended up going through a bunch of caves, which was fun

Enoch liked this outlook at Turtle Head Rock

Enoch loved climbing over all the granite rocks by himself

The park police got mad at me for trying to climb up some rocks. I told him that I could read the sign and that it said not to go past the fence... but he wasn't persuaded.

This was actually 2/3 down the mountain, but it got really misty. It made for a fun, mystic environment

This rock is supposed to look like a lion's head

Some really old Daoist temple

After hiking this day, we drove straight to "Hot Springs Town". I was envisioning something natural / outdoorsy. Instead, the town pipes the natural hot spring water and hotels use it for swimming pools and spas. It was fun to swim with everyone.

On this side of the street alone there were 12 nearly identical hotels lined up, all offering hot spring baths. We stayed in a larger one for about $50 per room that offered large spas and swimming pools

I got made at them because they made us by swimming caps for $1 US to swim in the pool. Apparently your hair falls out if you don't use them.

Took a few pictures of the spa areas (the only convenient pictures to take were of inactive spas that didn't have hot water, so no steam)

The whole group of us (-me)

The whole trip was only 2 nights and 3 days, but it was exhausting. We've traveled many thousands of miles over the past 6 months and are ready for a long rest and routine.

No I didn't let Sharon keep sleeping like this