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Sacred Way, near the Ming Tombs (yet another thing to pay admission for).
This is a really long path with large stone statues of people, animals, and mythical beasts lining it on both sides. (You can see how we desecrated some for photo ops in other albums.) Hey, it was better than the Tombs.

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Ming Tombs, Thursday afternoon:
After walking all over the Wall, we rode in the vans for about 90 minutes through the Chinese backcountry to get to the valley where the Ming emperors were buried. The one whose excavated tomb we got to walk through: Dingling. (I'm not making that up.)

The thing they don't tell you up front: They've taken pretty much everything out of the tomb, making it more or less just an underground room with fluorescent lighting. (Particularly disappointing after the grandeur of the Wall.) Here we are making our way out and on to his monument where they note his accomplishments. It was blank. No joke.

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Great Wall: Here's a shot of the other direction, after we'd walked back quite a ways. However, coincidentally, we made it about to the second guard tower. Really, we walked a great distance.

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Great Wall: Looking through that guard tower at the next. Which was farther than Saul and I wanted to continue. We did go back the other way past where we started, which is more than those go-getters who went all the way can say.

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Great Wall: The wall stretches for over 6,000 km, but this restored portion only went about as far as that last hilltop in the distance. I'm told that a few of the faster-walking members of our group made it all the way to the end; they weren't stopping to take many pictures, I bet. Me, I made it to that second guard tower in the foreground.

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Great Wall: Looking down from one of the guard towers at Hans, Debbie, and Wila. That's the thing about building in the mountains: It's got it's ups and downs. (Ba-dum-chink! Thanks, I do two shows on Sundays...)

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Great Wall: We were expecting cool temperatures, but it was very pleasant (I bought a new jacket in Shanghai in preparation, which I ended up carrying). And after the climb we were more than warmed up. (No, I'm not obsessed with getting the subjects of the picture to actually LOOK at the camera. That's rather obvious.)

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Great Wall at Mutianyu, Thursday morning:
Again Mrs. Chen got us vans and drivers and even a guide and we headed north about 90 km to a restored part of the wall that isn't as tourist-laden as Badaling. Here we are, forgoing the cable car up the hill to the wall. Just to give you some idea of how far up it was, I took three pictures of us just climbing the stairs (the other two I'll save for another album), mostly because I had to stop to catch my breath. It was somewhat disheartening when the elderly Chineses folk passed me. (Notice the autumn colors on the leaves.)