幽谷神探 Yougushentan

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Lauren and I trucked it out to Yougushentan last Sunday. We went to the Dongzhimen long bus station which was kind of around the corner from the subway stop. To get there you have to leave the subway stop building and wander around and keep asking people if you're going in the right direction. : ) People kept telling us that there weren't any public buses left to where we wanted to go and we had to take their mini bus, but I would like the internet to know that the whole way is do-able by public bus and they seem to run every half hour from morning to night. Due to some confusions and timing and whatnot we ended up taking a sketch bus thing and a car for the Huairou - Yougushentan travels, about 20 minutes each way(?). The 936 and 916 long distance buses both go to a stop in Huairou 30 km from Yougushentan called 家于园 (I'm not positive about the order of those characters). That ride is 1-2 hours and costs about 12 kuai. From there you have to change to a different bus that is also called 936 (hahaha!) and goes all the way to Yougushentan. We never managed to take that other 936 bus and instead wasted 30 kuai per person per direction getting people to drive us. On the way over, we didn't know about the second bus. On the way back, we heard that the buses just pass you by if they are too full of people. We seriously needed to make it back in time for the last bus to Beijing which was apparently at 7 PM so we couldn't risk waiting and had to accept the ride from annoying-praying-on-tourists-man. Besides the transportation details that I have written for the next googling soul, the park was great - I really recommend it!

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Photos

Public bus over
Basically the same as the buses in the city but they didn't also play English over the announcements : ) Very comfortable.

Huairou!
Mentioned a lot in the book my mom gave me to read, "Country Driving" by Peter Hessler. After reading a lot about it I was excited we happened to drive through it!

到了！
The first of many pools!

Beautiful waterfall
Going down into a large pool.

Large lake between mountains
I took a really nice swim here.

Ever higher
It seemed like at every point on the hike up was a different waterfall into a different pool of water.

Dry riverbed leading up to the mountains
After getting to the end of the established trail we off-roaded it and hiked up a mostly dry riverbed.

Running water
Down the middle of the riverbed.

Private pool!
Past the established trail, there was nobody here. I took a quick dunk!

A public bus that goes all the way there!
It exists!

Standing on the highway
There weren't seats on the bus back to Beijing so we had to pack in and stand in the middle... on the highway!

Packed
We got to sit for the last 15 minutes of the ride and it was the best 15 minutes of sitting we've ever had.