Look Mom! I'm On The Great Wall!

There are no words.

It is just that cool.

Behold.

The Wall.

Seriously guys, everyone needs to go here. It is so amazing, and a huge highlight of our trip. We traveled out to the Mutianyu section of the wall, which is further away from the city than the more popular Badaling section but is significantly less crowded. The weather was beautiful and the sky was amazingly clear and blue, definitely not smoggy and polluted like we were expecting. It was warm but breezy, and we loved it. You can hike up and down to the wall, but why hike when you can take a ski lift?!

First order of business was to take family pictures. The last family pics were taken at our wedding, but since I was less than thrilled with our photographer's work, we opted for a destination shoot.

And our photographers? Our Flagship friends who had moved to Beijing for the internship portion. We love these guys and it was so fun to spend the day with them and catch up.

After family pictures most of Spencer's family decided to explore the less renovated, much steeper direction while the rest of us decided to take the gentler path.

We met back up to rehydrate, snack, and make a plan and then Spencer and I and the sisters decided to explore just a little more while the parents headed back to where we started. We hiked quickly to get a few more guard towers in and take a few more pictures...

And then it was time to head back. We should have been sad, but we weren't. Because we knew that we weren't hiking to the bottom. We weren't even taking the ski lift.

We took a SLIDE! The best part of this section of the wall. If you go to the Wall, go here, and take the slide. So much fun. I have a video taken by Papa Bowen of the ride, but it's such a large file that it isn't downloading. If I can get it to load I'll post it later.

On the way home we slept. Honestly, I think we slept every time we stopped moving on this trip. But it was a great, exhausting, beautifully wonderful day.