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I was able to escape Beijing for a couple days to go camping in the mountains with some friends. We had the most gorgeous weather; sometimes the government’s experiments with the weather do work out, but only sometimes. The two perfect weekend days came after a week of haze, humidity, and constipated rain (rain that misted the air, but wouldn’t quite fall, and created an aggravating situation in which there wasn’t enough precipitation to merit carrying an umbrella, but enough to get you wet and make your hair frizzy and uncontrollable).

We rented a car that drove us two hours outside of Beijing, to a place called Haizikou. You can see for yourself how lush the mountains were, and how blue the sky was! From there, we hiked for about two hours down into the valley.

After two hours, we found a terraced patch of land and an abandoned grain mill hewed out of stone (See middle picture). The grain mill made a perfect table for our copious amounts of food (pastas, snacks, sausages, bagels, cheeses, wines, and of course, s’mores!). We dined well. No instant noodles for this group. One guy in the group even brought fresh basil to make his own pasta sauce! (See me gazing at the table of food trying to decide what to eat!)

Our tents were right above the stone mill, on a terraced patch of land, just big enough for our 6 tents. We had to climb up a wall to get to our tents, which was easier than it looked given all the footholds. The two dogs on the trip had trouble though, and had to be lifted up and down. We then spent the rest our our daylight hours collecting firewood (My friend below finds a creative way to break dead branches) and playing baseball with small stones and the walnuts from the walnut trees that surrounded the place.

Last but not least, as we were hiking the next day, we came across a reservoir. It was the first body of water in China that I did not think twice about jumping in and swimming! The water was clean, clear, and cold! It was definitely refreshing.