Fairy's trip to the Apple farm and the Spa

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This blog is a continuation of our weekend trip with Fairy. After we left the rural villages we drove to a huge apple farm where we had some lunch and toured the area. After we drove to Bing Yu Village home of the Bu Yun Mountain Hot Springs. The hot springs area was a bit disappointing as we were expecting something like the Rockies. All in all and interesting experience. Rick made a hit with a bus load of chinese tourists who all wanted to have their picture taken with him.

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Photos

Apple Farm
This is a small portion of the apple farm. Most of the apples had already been havested but the place was huge. Fairy talked about bring us back in the spring when all the trees are in bloom.

lunch at the apple farm
When we got to the apple farm we went into this building that over looks the entire farm for lunch (which Fairy had packed for us and brought in the car.

The three gourd
They had the gourds growing throughout the farm. They were really only for show but they were cool and in all sorts of shapes. (See next picture)

The snake gourd
This gourd looks like snake

Personalized apples
In order for them to personalize apples for special functions they put a plastic decal on the apple a couple weeks before it ripens. The part of the apple that is covered by the decal doesn't turn red. And voila personalized apples. These apples were huge!

Gail's big apples
Here's Gail showing off her big "apples"

The big gun
And here's Rick showing off his big gun! Actual they use this gun to shoot some sort of shells into the clouds if they are predicting frost or ice rain. Somehow these shell cause the weather system to miss the apple farm. Maybe some of our farmers need to get a couple of these to help with havest!

Beautiful fall colors
This was the end of October and the color of the leafs were beautiful

More fall colors
Trees along the highway

Loveable animal?
The farm even had some loveable animals!

Typical Chinese bed
This is the hotel room we stayed in at the hot springs . The beds are very typical Chinese beds as they like very hard mattresses (about 2 inches thick). It takes some getting used to but now Gail prefers the hard mattress as she finds her back feels much better in the morning. This hotel was just built and in fact it wasn't even finished. The elevator was still being built. The air conditioning and the heater ran off the lights to the room so when you turned off the lights the heater or the air conditioner turned off. Thankfully it was neither too hot or too cold.!

A little market
This was a little market acorss from the hotel that we stopped at while walking to the hot springs. The hot springs was a large outside hot pool with large change rooms where you could exfolliated or a massage. Gail was exfolliated but Rick wasn't quite ready for a male to rub his body.

Exfolliating fish
Beside the large outdoor hot pool this place also had a pool where you would sit amongst all these little fish that would eat the dead skin off your body. At first Gail could hardly stand the tickleing feeling you got as these fish nibbled on you. But after while you get used to it. This place was supposed to be the highlight of the weekend but for us everything was better. The place was packed with Chinese tourists so Rick was easy to find in the pool.

RIck Loves the Fish!
You can see how much Rick is enjoying this process. Maybe it is just the hat that he is grimacing about.