Back to Silver Mountain Pagoda Forest

Saturday morning was pretty hazy, and we believed that the rest of the day would be the same.  Based on this assumption, we thought that after Myles' soccer game we would take Katie to the Silver Mountain Pagoda Forest.  We believed that a visit to this park would not be significantly affected by the visibility.  A hazy day would be just as good as a clear day.

We were happily wrong on all counts.

The skies cleared just after noon, giving us immaculate blue skies and such amazing visibility that I have no idea what we were thinking.  Certainly on our previous visit the air had been fairly clear, but we got so hopelessly lost on criss-crossing trails that we did not make it to the mountain peak, or even close.

On Saturday after wandering around and admiring the surviving ancient pagodas, we headed up the mountain.  This time we made it higher than before, all of us reaching the bell pavilion, and some of us getting to the mountain peak.  Yes, once again I stayed lower, but this time was because I've been battling a sinus infection since Xi'an, and I was starting to feel a little woozy.

What follows first are pictures I took from a platform close to the peak.  The pagodas (pictured in this previous post) are so little.  From near the peak (and at the peak, too) Great Wall was visible for miles and miles across several passes, all the way to Mutianyu.  As we always say in our family, even when it isn't about the Great Wall, it is about the Great Wall.  In another direction, the high rises of Beijing was just visible. Man, are we glad we were wrong all around! In each of these two pairs of pictures, the right-side photo is zoomed in.

These are two pictures Randy took with his phone.