5 months in China: I can see clearly now the rain is gone

Since it continued to rain up through Sunday, we decided to see how the weather was going to be the next few days. If it dried it up enough, we'd go on Wednesday. No rain Monday and most of Tuesday. I wanted to leave the house no later than 6:30, so we made plans to meet 7:30 at the Dongzhimen subway platform.

Didn't think about it being a transfer station and there would be multiple platforms. Oops. My cell phone fritzed so I had to switch to my mother-in-laws phone that doesn't have a screen lock and I couldn't figure out how to turn the ringer on. Great.

So I called and he hadn't heard me and got there at 6:30 and was waiting at some other bus station a block away. Oops. So we got started later than I anticipated, but the 852 ended up being 1hr 20 min ride compared to the 918 at 2 hr between the points of Dongzhimen and Pinggu. If you have the bus/subway card it's 9rmb one-way, else 15rmb.

I had bought a backpack earlier in the week to be able to pack a sweater, food and water bottles. I wear it on the front. To me it's the poster model for "I have trust issues". But better safe than sorry. It's how most of them where it here.

The Pinggu local bus 25 was pulling away as we arrived, so we had to wait a half hour for the next one. There is no stop guide posted on these buses. If I hadn't done my research on-line to know which bus to get on, it would be a crap shoot. Luckily I wrote out all the names in English with the pinyin and hanzu. I showed the bus driver and he said he'd let us know when to get off.

Pinggu was 76 km from Beijing. From Pinggu the caves were 17 km, the gorge 25 km both on the bus 25 route. I never saw a Beijing bus driver smoke or talk on his cell phone before. This one did. Outside of the tourist stops you really need to be a local to know where the bus stops because they are not marked with any signs. Also if there is no one waiting at the stop, they call out on the bus if anyone is getting off(when the driver is not on the phone), if not it keeps going. (City buses stop at all the stops regardless).

It took about 35-40 minutes to get to Jingdong Stone Forest Gorge Scenic Area aka Shilinxia. Every website I looked at listed 60rmb as the entrance fee. It was 78rmb. My in-laws were worried about me getting stuck in mud from all the rain and cautioned me to have someone walk ahead of me and get a walking stick. I did not walk on any dirt here. The whole walkway was paved. Either walking on cut rocks, planted stone path, or metal walkways/stairs.

Outside the entrance were some water rides, in different man made pools. The lower levels of the scenic area also had a human touch in cemented riverbed and channeling of the water. There were 2 separate cable car runs. We didn't waste the extra dough.

On-line I saw it posted that there is a 1.5 hr walking route. On the entrance legend map I did not note any times listed. We ended up taking 2.5 hours. We saw most of it. And my legs were wet noodles by the time we were done from walking up and down all the stairs.

As we are walking toward the road we see our bus coming and must run to catch it, else be left waiting for the next in half an hour. Luckily they see us flailing our arms and wait a moment for us to catch up!