Luhe National Geopark and Jin Niu Lake

So today's adventure featured Maggie and I leaving the apartment at 5:40am to meet up with Sakura and her mother across town by 7am.  We left the city and drove about an hour to the Luhe National Geopark, which is in the process of becoming a big tourism attraction but right now it looks like a quarry that people are able to walk around (you'll see in the pictures).  Basically it is a park looking at the interesting rock formations from a volcano eruption into near perfect hexagon and pentagon shaped columns.  The entrance fee was 15 Yuan, and we spent about 2 hours.  Anyways here are the pictures, enjoy.

This mountain was formed after the volcano erupted.

An example of the stones as they come off the rock wall, not man made.

The peacock formation of the rocks.

See a quarry, I wasn't lying.

This man almost got smacked when the shovel spun around. And he didn't seem to care, these Chinese all seem to have death wishes.

Biggest grasshopper I've ever seen.

After we walked around the park I was introduced to my first tasting of mooncake. This one was savoury and actually tasted pretty good, in my opinion.  After we sat and rested for a few minutes we made our way to a local restaurant that featured the local dish of crab dumplings. After getting slightly lost, stalling the car once or twice and getting a kind gentleman to show us the way we arrived at the restaurant.  Those dumplings were delicious, I ate 5 or 7 of them without any difficulty.
After lunch we made our way to the Jin Niu Lake.

This lake is actually a reservoir that is the largest in the region with an attached park for people to come spend an afternoon, just no swimming.  The cost per entry was 40 Yuan.  Sakura's mom brought along a tent to nap in, and that is what she did for the afternoon.  The three of us rested for about 30 minutes and then decided that we wanted to walk about and see the top of the nearby mountain.  That was a hike, especially considering it turns out we took the scenic route (climbing up hundreds of steps) when we could have taken the bike path.

Tandem bikes!

The hike was long and tiring.

The sign here mentions that when an emperor took the throne this "fish" was very happy and tried to jump across to a different lake and got stuck, but it is wagging it's tail in happiness. 

Buddhist temple at the top of the mountain.

These monkeys were chained to these pieces of wood because they are the mothers and the people didn't want them attacking tourists who were feeding their babies.  It was really sad, who knows when they are removed from these chains.

Sakura wanted to feed the monkeys.

All in all it was a good day.  Long but good.  I had a really great time.