Cliffs of Shaolin

Here is where things got interesting. You see, we were supposed to go from Xi'an to some other city that I can't spell or remember really. Namely because we didn't end up making it. Supposedly there was a monsoon, meaning our flight was canceled. The result was that we got the chance to go to the Shoalin Temple a day or two early. The total time was 4 days of training at the temple, which was awesome! The training at the temple I"ll most likely talk about a bit later. But basically it was we got there at about 8:30, trained for a couple hours, broke for lunch, and then came back around 2:30ish to train for a few more hours every day. In between we had about 4 hours. The first day we decided to go to the cliffs of Shaolin.

To get there, we picked up a random man with a van that just happened to be willing to drive us where ever we could manage to explain to him using mainly hand gestures. The trick was, there was 8 of us going, and, the van wasn't really that big.
The results were amusing. Nevertheless we managed to get where we intended to go, and it was a gondola. We took the gondola up the cliffs and mountains to the top, where there was a trail. The trail was supposedly 12 miles long, one way, at the end was another Buddhist temple. Sadly we didn't have time to make it all the way there, but we did marvel at the beauty of the area.

According to Master Williams, the one who led us here, there are warrior monks from the Shaolin Temple that *run* to the temple and back every morning. Yes, 24 miles, pretty much a marathon, in some pretty hilly (pretty sure uphill both ways) path along the side of a cliff. I'm not sure I believe it, but I want to.

Anyways, not much more to say about these cliffs, besides that they were amazing, and 2 of our group members was afraid of heights lol. I hope you enjoy the pictures! There are a lot of them, because they were pretty cool.

Old Rag

Today Rachel and I went hiking on a hiking trail in the Shenandoah called Old Rag. This hiking trail is near Skyline drive where I went with Linds and co a few weeks ago. This particular hike was quite challenging, but ultimately rewarding.

The hike itself is about 7.5 miles and starts at the bottom of the mountain... and then hikes up to the peak. So there is a pretty steep incline at the beginning that doesn't really let up till you reach the top. But the true fun part of this trail is the rock scrambling. Similar to the billy goat trail, there is a large section where you are jumping on and climbing on rocks. Though in comparison this trail is significantly more challenging than even that. But that also means it was more fun lol.

Anyways, I posted some of the pictures from the hike below in a slide show. No one seemed to object to the slide show format last time, so hopefully you all like it again.

Hiking and Fencing

This past weekend I went down to visit Ken and Becky in Charlottesville. On Saturday we went hiking. Of course on our first hike in a while, we did a hike straight up hill for about 1 mile. Needless to say I was quite exhausted by the end. But I made it, and the view was worth it.
Then on Sunday, I was able to go fencing at the Salle that Ken goes to. So yeah to getting back into fencing... Though I did get my butt kicked. Evidently I'm out of practice :-).
So Fencing was lots of fun. And I hope to get back into it I think. But we will see. For now though, my legs are really sore :-p. Hopefully though after a few days I'll be better.

So one of the hikes we went on in Terrace, was the Ferry Island hike. While by itself isn't too spectacular. Some local artists decided to get creative with it, providing a slightly more unique experience for those on the trail :-).

Most of the pictures were of the sort of peoples faces I guess. But a couple also deviated into stuff slightly more different... I'll post some of my favorites :-).


























And then there were some that were noticably different......































So these are some of the different carvings found throughout the hike. Finding these on the trees made it actually kinda fun :-).

And here is a picture of Breakfast being made.