Golden Dragon Great Wall

It's Saturday today and for the first time in our marriage, my husband K is working a Monday to Friday job(he has always worked shift work) so that means that Saturday is family adventure day!  Today we headed 45 minutes out of Chengdu to Luodai.  There is an ancient town there which, like most 'Ancient Towns' around here, is nothing but a tourist trap selling the usual stuff.  So we did a quick walk through before heading for the real adventure- The Golden Dragon Great Wall!  It's not THE Great Wall but a worthy knockoff I thought!

The scenery was beautiful- hills, lush greenery, flowers and sunshine!  Some of my favorite things!  It was a great leg workout, let me tell ya!  Lots of stairs to hoof it up but we all made it in one piece with a few stops along the way to have snacks and water.

One of the hills of stairs we had to climb.  This was the steepest set and though you can't really tell from the picture, it was nearly vertical. 

 

You can see the wall stretching across and up through the trees

The top of the wall had a shrine with many different statues.  I'm never sure whether pictures are allowed inside the shrine so I just don't take any.  Sorry!  There was an amazing Thousand Hand Buddha inside that was carved entirely from wood.  It was beautiful.

 

After hiking to the end we turned around and came back down to give the other side of our legs a workout ;)  I'm pretty sure that most of the people we passed were talking about how lazy we were going in the easy direction while they were huffing and puffing and puking on the stairs on the way up!  Ha Ha!  Fooled them!