Xi'an

Xi’an was the capital of China for 1,100 years and 13 imperial dynasties. Have you ever heard of the Silk Road, between Europe and China? Yeah, Xi’an was also the destination city of thousands of foreign Silk Road traders. My favorite stuff that we did in Xi’an was go for a bike ride on the city wall that encompasses downtown Xi’an and see the Terra Cotta Warriors and the Great Mosque.

Riding on the Xi'an City Wall

It was just so much fun to get on a bike! Even if the front wheel sounded like it was going to fall off. We didn’t get to ride all the way around (which would have been almost 10 miles), but we had 45 minutes to ride, take pictures, and goof off. I wore a skirt that day so it was an adventure to remain modest while riding. The city wall that exists today was built during the Ming Dynasty, which lasted from 1368-1644, and it has been restored nicely since then.

At the Terra Cotta Warriors

The Terra Cotta Warriors were definitely a highlight. There are over 8,000 warriors. The emperor Qin Shi Huangdi built them in the 3^rd century BC (he reigned during the late Zhou and the early Qin Dynasties from 247 to 210 BC). BC! A farmer digging a well discovered them in 1974, and the farmer himself was there the day we visited. So I shook his hand. That’s what he does there. He just sits there to shake visitors’ hands. And to sign a book and have people pay to take his photo. Ha! The warriors are all about 5 feet 10 inches tall and each have a different facial expression and look. They say no two warriors are the same. All of the warriors that are standing erect and put together…. yeah, they weren’t found that way. Archeologists put them back together from all of the original broken pieces. Talk about a crazy, hard puzzle. And they are still “actively” excavating the site today, although we didn’t see much activity happening.

At the Great Mosque

And then the Great Mosque was definitely one of my faves. The mosque is actually for Muslims…. Yeah, there are Chinese Muslims. In fact, we found out that our tour guide is Muslim. The Mosque was also built during the Ming Dynasty in entirely traditional Chinese style and architecture. It was beautiful! And so peaceful. Apparently, we were there too close to the 6 pm prayer time, otherwise we could have gone into the prayer hall. After that, we shopped in the market there in the Muslim Quarter neighborhood. I had fun bargaining with the shopkeepers!

Some of the other things we did in Xi’an:

• Terra Cotta Warrior factory – we got to see how the Terra Cotta Warriors are made … and I bought a few.
• We ate a dumpling banquet with at least 15 or 20 different types of dumplings (fillings). These dumplings were how we know them in the states – like pot stickers.
• Big Wild Goose Pagoda – a Buddhist temple with some pretty grounds and an amazing Jade mural of Sakyumani’s life on three walls. Everything in those murals was made of Jade. Apparently, Sakyumani was a famous Buddha.
• Shaanxi History Museum
• A Han Emperor and Empress Tomb site (Han Dynasty, 206 BC – AD 220) with 81 pits of little clay men and some clay concubines too!

To see more pics of China, go to my Flickr account. 

More of the Great Mosque

More of the Great Mosque

Muslim Quarter market

One of the cool bikes 

Another bike

Dumpling banquet

Another building part of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda grounds

at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda

The Jade mural of Sakyumani's life at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda

Flight Over to China

The flight over was not nearly as eventful as I feared it might be. My mother ship suitcase was too heavy – by 10 pounds so I had to pull out some things from it and carry them on. So I had a heavy backpack and a heavy messenger bag to carry on. I wasn’t too excited about that, but it was better than having to throw stuff out or pay a fee. Total flight time was 17 hours and I had two layovers: a 5-hour one in Los Angeles and a 4-hour one in Seoul, South Korea. So total travel time was 26 hours and I arrived in China two days later (as in, I left Utah Tuesday night and arrived in China Thursday morning).

The "Big Juan" that took me over the Pacific Ocean

 I was a little worried about the layover in South Korea. Were the signs going to be in English? Or will people help me find my gate if not? I’m used to layovers being in the U.S. and then just following the picture of the suitcase after arriving in the foreign country that is my destination. To my amazement, the Seoul-Incheon International Airport was fabulously nice! Lovely bathrooms that were clean and nice. Everything was in English. And shops that rival the nicest malls in America – Cartier, Tiffany’s, Mulberry, Coach, etc. The Xi’an airport was a little bit different. They have one terminal that is older and not as nice, which is the one I flew into. I read the sign for claiming stuff in customs several times to make sure I wasn’t bringing any contraband into the country. Thankfully, Chinese customs only consisted of me putting my mother ship onto an x-ray/scanning machine and then I was Scott-free.

Sitting at my gate in the Seoul-Incheon International Airport

 My next scary moment was who was picking me up? I was told that a travel agent was going to hold my name on a sign and pick me up, but was it going to be some scary person that would kidnap me and turn me into a slave?! Thankfully, no. It was a woman about my same age named, Chen. She was our tour guide for the whole weekend! And she was wonderful. She and I ended up hanging out a lot together on Thursday as the rest of my BYU group was late coming into Xi’an due to a delayed departure.

As for jet lag, I didn’t really have it; or at least I didn’t get it very bad. I felt a little tired in the late afternoon after we picked up the BYU group, but I stayed awake, didn’t need a nap, and was able to go to bed and sleep at the normal hours and through the night. But! I didn’t escape the kankles (aka massively swollen ankles). It took two days to get rid of them. Wow.

Backpacking Trip to the Uintahs

Mike and I and Dave and Jenn went on a little backpacking trip over this past weekend to the Uintahs. Friday night, we hiked about 4 or 5 miles in on the Christmas Meadows trail toward Ryder, McPheters, and Kermsuh Lakes trails. Then the guys took us off trail, bushwhacking!, for about 10 minutes until we found a good area to set up camp.

On Saturday, we hiked toward Ryder Lake and McPheters Lake which ended up being about a 10 mile day hike. After visiting the frozen over McPheters Lake the guys wanted to follow the outlet to see if there were any waterfalls, and there were! But that meant more bushwhacking - a lot of it! I haven't crossed so many rivers, swamp lands, nor climbed under and over so many trees.

Sunday we hiked up to Kermsuh Lake which was a shorter hike although we did a lot more bush-whacking on that hike too. The guys wanted to fish along the creek on the hike up so Jenn and I headed on out ahead of them. However, Mike said the trail would be hard to follow once we got to the big meadow. Yeah. That was an understatement. We lost the trail entirely. Good thing Mike gave me his GPS with the lake flagged on it. We followed the GPS's straight line to the lake and that meant bush-whacking again. But we made it to the lake! Hung out there for a while waiting for the guys to show up and to fish at the lake for a while. Then we hiked out of the lake, packed up camp, and hiked out to the car. We didn't see any animals on our trip at all until we were driving on the highway back home - we saw several deer and a moose!

The Great Vernal Trifecta

Mike and his friends have this rule about their adventure weekends: there has to be at least three sports participated in each time! They call it a trifecta. So we drove to Vernal and camped on Friday night.

Activity 1: A short mountain bike ride on the Jazz trail. Where my bike really started to act up so we took it into a shop back in Vernal for a quick fix.

Activity 2: Float the Green River for 8 miles from Flaming Gorge dam. I started out in a one-person inflatable kayak, but then Mike wanted me to try his pack raft - which was a riot of fun!

Activity 3: We mountain biked again except this time on a 20-miler trail called Flume Trail. Crazy, huh? That Utah also has a Flume Trail. That was a long and rocky trail, but it was fun!

Activity 4: Go on an 8 mile hike along Jones Creek so Mike and his friend, Dave, could fly fish while I laid in a hammock and read my book. That was lovely too. :)

We got home at 2 o'clock in the morning, Sunday night. Very long and very full weekend!

Little Red Riding Hood 2013

Teri and I did it again! I think for the fourth year in a row now.... 100 miles on our road bikes with a bunch of my friends: Kendra, Katie, Janie, and Dorothy. This year we hauled! - with Kendra pulling again. I think we finished it in 6 hours.

Tahoe for Memorial Day

I talked Mike into taking a road trip over Memorial Day weekend even though he hates traveling on big travel weekends. Memorial Day weekend happened to be the weekend of his sister's birthday so he thought it would be fun to go to Lake Tahoe (which is near where she lives) to play and to visit his sister and her family. We packed up our mountain bikes, hiking clothes, and a birthday party in a bag/box and drove the 10ish hours to Lake Tahoe.

We mountain biked around South Lake Tahoe Saturday morning before hooking up with Christine and her family (that's Mike's sister). We tried to surprise her on the bike trail, but we found out she already figured out we were coming since her husband had been acting too strangely what with trying to get everyone to clean the house before going for a bike ride... ha ha! We had pizza and the party. Sunday we hiked Horse Tail Falls before going to church with Christine and family. Then we had a BBQ.

And then Monday was the amazing and famed Flume Trail - in very cold weather! We loved it. And we took a lot of pictures. :)

Moab Craziness with Jenn

I was itching to get out of dodge and desperate enough to go with just Jenn so we took off to Moab for a quick weekend. We slept in the back of Ruby (my Subaru Outback). Jenn did a very strange mountain bike race, and then we rode the famed Slickrock trail. We had a blast! And we got along great! .... as long as Jenn kept her sticky, messy, smelly stuff on her side of the car. That rule was made after Jenn packed a spray bottle of chain cleaner in the bottom of her bag and it leaked all over her stuff on her side. So I think it was a legitimate rule! Ha ha!