This morning started early; I had calls and meetings that ran from 3:30am right up until I met the rest of the gang for breakfast at 7:00am. In China, we’re exactly 12 hours off time-zone-wise; it’s easy to keep track of the time at home but difficult to keep up communications.

Here’s my new office – the spacious, dark lobby of the hotel where we are staying.

We got an early start on our sightseeing.. about a 2 hour drive up into the mountains north of Beijing. And then, we mounted a sky lift to take us to the top of the peak. Here is our version of a selfie with Donny and Meredith behind us. How is it more people don’t fall out of these things to their death?

But it was all worth it – to spend a morning on the Great Wall.

One doesn’t so much as “walk” the Great Wall as you go up and down a lot of stairs; some of them are so steep you have to use your hands to couch and crawl up and down. Most areas do not have handrails.

This is a location that is well worth the hype. The wall is over 13,000 miles long, but there are only a relatively few spots that are open to the public near Beijing. Most of the wall is deteriorating, but the Chinese government is now pumping more money into the effort to restore and maintain what they have. Construction started around 800BC and ran pretty continuously until 1700AD.

We got to the site quite early in order to avoid all of the tourists. Things start to get much more crowded later in the day. I desperately wanted some photos while the sun will still low in the morning and the wall wasn’t filled with bodies.

We walked a section until we ran to the end of the line that is open to the public.

As a special treat, our guide knew of a restricted area that we could sneak into to walk a bit along the side of the wall and over to a section that is not yet restored.

Climbing up the rubble to the top of an un-restored artery that branches off from the main line.

You can see in the distance (to the left) that this section continues – it turns out off for another couple hundreds of miles.

Our hike there and back again, we opted to go back down to the mountain base using a toboggan ride. You control the speed with a handbrake.

Visiting the Great Wall was the foundation location of this entire visit. Donny was anxious to tick off this “bucket list” event and we were only too happy to help him make it happen.

After this, it was time for lunch and our drive back to the city for some more sightseeing.