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Journal
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Friday, September 29, 2006 Sunset 
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 Sunrise 
Monday, September 25, 2006 So how did I occupy myself during a 34 hours of recent transit? Among other things, I went through the pictures that we took on our recent trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. You can view them here. Enjoy. 
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 And the sign of the day is prohibiting exploding cars? roof fires?  UPDATE: I have been informed that the sign means essentially "vehicles containing combustible materials cannot use this street" Duh :)
Self portrait in squat toilet  After meetings today I made an all too brief visit to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. (click image for larger version) ) This must be where they take Western business-folk with an hour to spare because I saw several other corporate expeditions. This section of the wall was an entirely different experience than the Juyongguan section that I visited in July of 2005. The most obvious difference is that there's a gondola to get you up to the top, and then you can walk along the wall. There are still definitely hills, and steps, and hills, and steps. FAR fewer people though, which made for a much more pleasant experience. 
Tuesday, September 19, 2006  An unusual travel habit that I have is drinking coca cola. I never drink the stuff at home, but for some reason when I'm out of the country I just can't get enough of it. I had two hours between meetings and dinner today, so I made a very quick visit to the Summer Palace.  This is the infamous "Long Gallery". It is 728 meters of painted wonder and quite crowded. If you aren't careful you can get scooped up by a hat-wearing flag-carrying group of tourists.  I saw this sign on one of the shops.  Wouldn't it be helpful if shops in the US would list their slack season! I also saw this sign at the entrance and thought it was pretty inclusive. No motorcycles, cut flowers, resting?, taxis, could be littering/could be peeing, trombones?, speed skating, soccer playing, rifles, poodles, NO idea, and campfires.  UPDATE: A helpful reader informed me that the one in middle of the bottom row is firecrackers.
Monday, September 18, 2006 Today was spent in meetings at the Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City. Much of the Palace Museum is under renovation, and while it is disappointing to see many of the significant buildings shrouded in construction screens, they have taken a unique approach by scren printing images of the building on the screen. (click image for larger version showing the Hall of Supreme Harmony) ) After work, we went to the "night market" to accomplish my #1 non-work goal on this trip - view the infamous Chinese delicacies. I'm not sure why there's a deer in the signage, because most of the...cuisine was ocean-going or internal organ-ish.  And then I hit the mother load. Not only did they have beetles and larvae, but they had two varieties of scopions - one that was larger than my hand and was frightening even though it was dead and on a skewer. A shish-ka-bob of the big black ones went for 50 yuan ($7), while the little guys go for 15 yuan ($2). 
Sunday, September 17, 2006 ) View from my room at the Shangri La Hotel in Beijing. ) ) ) Taken with a Nokia 3650 Cameraphone - View all cameraphone pictures
Saturday, September 16, 2006 Sunrise this morning - yes, up unusually early on a Saturday because I'm leaving for China. 
Wednesday, September 06, 2006 Greetings from the Jackson airport. We spent yesterday afternoon hiking the Jenny Lake area. We took the shuttle boat, which saved us a two mile (each way) hike around the lake for a feww of $9 per person. We hiked up to see the waterfall, and then to Inspiration Point which had a great view of the lake. We heard there was a moose about a mile past Inspiration Point up Cascade Canyon, and then another moose a mile or so past that - still not sure why we undertook this expedition since this place is crawling with moose, but we wanted to see the back country variety that don't have identification collars on them. The plan was to hike until 4:30, and then turn around because we didn't want to miss the last boat and have to walk the 2 mile path back to the car. We found the first moose, a cow munching on some grass in an open pasture area. We were walking pretty fast and I was surprised how fast we were able to go given that this place is at about 7200 feet and we're used to city walking at Chicago altitude. We kept going, and at 4:30 we passed some people who said that the other moose was only 5 more minutes farther, so we kept going. Sure enough, there he was, laying in a field about 100 yards away. We snapped a few quick pictures and then took off back towards the shuttle boat dock. I don't think I've EVER seen us move this fast - EVER. Long story short, we made it back to the dock at 5:50pm, the second to last boat just as it started to rain. We think it was 6.5 miles round trip, in 3ish hours counting photo stops. Then we bought some Advil. We stopped by Oxbow Bend, where we saw the moose on the first day, on the way back, and of course there was a moose there. Last night we had dinner at the dining room in the lodge, which has free wireless in the lobby and a fabulous view.  This morning we drove over to Oxbow Bend, and there was a moose about 25 yeards from the road causing quite a moose jam. We drove down a side road that we think leads to a picnic area and saw some beaver, pelican, and cormorant and heard a whopping crane. We then had breakfast at the lodge (they have a cool "all counter" restaurant with neat historical photos) before heading to the airport which is less than an hour drive. Put 600 miles on the rental car - and now we have 6 hours of flying to get back to Chicago.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006 Have been without a wireless signal for a few days in various parts of Yellowstone National Park. On Sunday we woke up very early and headed for the Lamar Valley, nicknamed the "Serengeti of North America". We saw herds of bison (some so close we could hear them grunting and chewing), elk, deer, antelope, fox, and pronghorn. We also came across some researchers who were tracking some wolves - they were about a mile away across an open valley, but they had some awesome scopes and let us have a peek. There were about 8 of them and it was neat to watch them completely oblivious to human attention. We had breakfast at the Roosevelt Lodge and then headed over to the Canyon area of the park (and along the way we spotted black bears! - they were off in the distance, but it was fun to watch them play in the forrest). We went on a four mile hike to Ribbon Lake and then headed to the Old Faithful area where we spent the night.  Monday was geothermal day - we started with a hike to the observation area above Old Faithful (2 miles roundtrip) and then walked around the geysers in the Old Faithful area. Then we visited the Midway Geyser Basin and the Artists Paintpots before heading out to West Yellowstone to visit the Grizzly and Wolf Center. The verdict is in - the animal we say was a coyote (and we've seen several since). We saw tons of elk and buffalo on the way back. It seems that the magic hours for animal spotting are the same world wide - the hours around dawn and dusk. We're now at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park. We're headed out for a 2 mile hike near Jenny Lake and then perhaps into Jackson. Weather has been absolutely perfect, except we underestimated the cold mornings and should have brought warmer clothes for the early morning game drives :)
Saturday, September 02, 2006 Greetings from Yellowstone! It's been quite a day, so here's a brain dump. The flight into Jackson Hole was quite scenic - we even saw a bison jam (traffic due to people watching bison). Air Force II was at the airport because Dick Cheney is in town, and has been for several days (note to self, stay out of the woods and wear bright colors). On the drive the Grand Teton (we don't visit there until Tuesday) we spotted a bull moose and watched him swim in a lake and munch on grass for a while.  This was the first of many animal spottings. We've seen male and female moose, male and female elk, bison, big horn sheep, a wolf or a coyote (verdict still out, and to tell you the truth I don't know the difference other than wolfs are bigger and rarer), and a fox.  We're staying in Mammoth tonight, which is in the north part of the park. It is literally crawling with elk - and buggling (which I'm sure that I'm spelling wrong, but the noise that they make is called a buggle). We just finished a very good meal in the dining room and are about to crash. The plan for tomorrow is an early (and I do mean EARLY) morning drive to look for critters, followed by a mid day hike.
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