Mt. St. Helens and Oregon Beach

Jul. 19 and Jul. 20

We are eager to have a longer trip after staying home for so many weeks. In memorial day, the weather was so bad and we did not see a thing in Mt. St. Helens. Now, the weather is nice so we want to go there again.

It's summer time, the flowers along the slopes looks beautiful. In one viewpoint, we saw some elks along the rivers using powerful monocular for visitors. We visited Johnson visitor center and watched the shot film about the 1980 blast. Only had a shot hike on the small ridge outside of the Johnson visitor Center.

Elk viewing

the Volcano
trees died of the explosion
magnificent bridge

Keep driving to Portland. Stayed in Days Inn for the night.

The next day, we drove to Cannon Beach. It's a clear day. A bit windy on the beach. We walked along the beach and took some pictures. There were a lot of seabirds near the stones. Some people were riding the fun bikes. A few people were riding horses along the beach.

Cannon beach
Seabirds
amzing stones

After visiting Cannon beach, we went to Seaside. Good to know that Seaside was "the end of trail" for Lewis and Clark. There were some beach Frisbee competition going on. Seaside is more developed in terms of tourism industry than Cannon Beach. However, I think Cannon beach is more beautiful.

the end of the trail
Seaside Beach

We drove along the south side of Columbia river then I5 to come home. It's a short weekend but with tons of fun.

Las Vegas and Death Valley N.P.

The first day of the trip was one of the worst I ever experienced. At first, the airplane was delayed for about 1 hour in Sea-Tac airport. It's a very windy day in Vegas. The first landing was a scare. The airplane was suddenly lifted up on the runway. I could see the baseball field besides the airport clearly. The airplane circled Vegas for another time. While it lands, there were claps out of relieved passengers. We rented a car from Hertz and was told the car had a full tank. We drove out of the rental car garage. When we were just on I15, the indicator showed "low fuel". The gas needle was in the "E" side rather than in the "F" side. We had to get out of the highway and parked somewhere. I called Hertz and they told me to add gas myself. So we used our GPS device to find the nearest gas station. It found the one near the Sahara road, which we used years ago when we visited Vegas. However, when we drove there, the gas station was gone. The place was a big work site for a new hotel. We drove across I15 for another few miles to find a gas station. With Gas in the tank, I felt a little better. We drove to the parking lot of Circus Circus, our hotel. It's a Saturday night. There were just too many people. I droved up from the ground floor to the very top of parking building 1 without being able to find a parking spot. We had to go to parking building 2, where we found a spot on the fourth floor. After registration, it's already too late about 9:30pm. Everyone were hungry. We thought it's time to treat us the famous Las Vegas buffet. When we walked through the casino. However, the buffet was just closed. So we had to settle down on the MacDonald. What a day!

The second day wasn't that bad. Vegas is always fun. We visited Excalibur, Luxor, Mandalay Bay at first. Then moved Bellagio, besides our favorite fountain show, we were also impressed by its autumn decoration. Out of Bellagio, we went to Flamingo, Bally and Paris. We happened to view the opera kind of show at Venice. Unfortunately, we couldn't see the Pirate show in Treasure Island because it was windy.

Autumn Deco at Bellegio
Eiffel Tower at Paris Hotel
Grand Canal Shopping Square at Venice Hotel
Live Sculpture at Venice Hotel
Italy Opera at Venice Hotel
Pirate Show at Treasure Island Hotel

The third day, we went to Death Valley NP. Along the way, there were so many houses built or to be built. One can feel the seriousness of the housing problem.

Death Valley is a starch contrast to the excessive and artificial Vegas. We visited the furnish creek oasis, Sand Dunes, Mosaid Canyon and of course Bad Water. At the end , we drove to the Dante's point to view the whole Death Valley.

Zabriskie Point I

Zabriskie Point II
Mosiad CanyonBadwater Salt Flat

Artist's Pallete

Valley View at Dante's Point I
Valley View at Dante's Point II

When we came back, we caught the Pirates show in TI. Vacation just getting better and better but it came to an end.

Pirates Show in Action I

Pirates show in Action II

Mirage Hotel

China Trip

May 31 - June 18
Canadian Airline: Settle -- Vancouver -- Beijing

Beijing (6/1 - 6/3)
We visited the TianAnMen square. There were so many tourist groups of people from small towns and villages. These days, they have enough money to travel and see the world outside of their ordinary life. Air is quite bad, as you can see from the picture below taken around 8:30am.

TianAnMen Square

We visited the Forbidden city next. Admission fee is 60￥. Many buildings are under construction for the 2008 Olympics.

Beautiful Roof

Court Yard

This is the first time I actaully visisted the small palaces outside the central axis. On the west side, there were exhibition about the lives of CiXi and PuYi. There was a piano in a room. Western culture had a lot of influence on the life in late Qing dynasty. On the east side, there are exhibition about China and Bronze. The "Jing Xing Bang", on which the name of the people who donated to the Forbidden city are listed, was quite touching for me.

American Express Donated this Plate

景行榜

Forbidden city is the biggest museum in the world. The trip is very educational for me.

故宫角楼

I visited Tsinghua university the next day. It's like an old firend I haven't been in touch for a long time. Revisiting Tsinghua, walking in the Campus, so many treasured memories come back to me again just like reconnecting with an old friend.

Old Library Building

水木清华
王国维 纪念碑

十三号楼

We also visited the TuShu City in Haidian, where I used spent so much time and money during my student life in Tsianghua. 第三极 is really impressive, with the environment "Barnes Noble" type of nice environment but much larger. One can say it is a Barnes Noble on steroid. We bought many books there. I wish I had more time to spend there.

Taiyuan (6/4--6/17)
Improved Environment
Comparing to the polluted, crowded big city Beijing, I found that I like more and more Tiayuan, my home town.

At the time I was in China, the pollution was worse in Taiyuan comparing to Beijing. Over the last few years, Taiyuan cleaned up quite a lot. Actually, the city government wants to build Taiyuan as a garden city, a quite ambitious undertaking looks to me considering the actual climate and geography conditions. Anyway, one can see great progress made over the last decade.

河滨 Park was really impressive. The old smelly swamp of 汾河 was thoroughly cleaned up. So many citizens are enjoying the park along both along the river banks . There are fishes in 汾河. Many people were swimming in 汾河, which is a great proof of the improvement in environment. Although the air is also smoggy in Taiyuan as seen in the picture below, but one can feel clearly that it is better than that in Beijing.

People swimming in 汾河

On the morning of June 6, we walked crossed 迎泽 park. The park used to have entrance fee. Now it is open to public for free. Some people were practicing local Opera in a pavilion. Another group of people were playing Chinese chess. I even saw a group of roughly twenty people gathered together listening to the lectures of Budahism.

A group of people playing local Opera

People playing Chinese Chess

I also took some pictures along the YingZe street. The trees are really lovely. YingZe street is under construction. As you can see, the sky is a blue one.

Beautiful pedestrian street

Street under construction

College Entrance Exam (6/7-6/8)
It was the time for college entrance exam. It's one of the most important moments for students, their parents and the society. The lives of these students and their family could go different directions just because the difference of a few points in exam results. Parents are anxiously waiting outside of the school campus. A lot of police are mobilized to ensure the order and to help students arriving at their exam locations in case of traffic problems.

No. 3 high school

No. 3 high school, anxious parents gathered outside of the school

No. 5 High School, Police are ensuring the order.

ShangTa shi and Jing Ci

I passed ShangTa shi in the morning of 6/9, Saturday. Shang Ta is a landmark for Taiyuan.

My college classmate and I went to Jing Ci on 6/15. It's a small but beautiful museum. Booming Economy (Soaring Real Estate Market and Stock Market)
Over the last few years, house prices almost doubled in Tiayuan. Booming real estate market also brings the prosperity in the business of furniture, decoration materials and construction materials. We visited a lot of furniture stores and construction material stores in Taiyuan. The size of these stores and the variety of goods are really impressive.

Crowded Interior Decoration Material Market

Lee's Furniture Store

Another big furniture storeFancy Furniture

Since the beginning of 2006, the stock market in China has been outstanding. So many people are getting rich. Stock is a constant topic during my classmate reunions.

Inflation is there. Food price increased a lot. This probably is good for the farmers.

Construction and Traffic Problem

Traffic is bad. But the thing made me unhappy is that it does not have to be that bad.

Taiyuan is under heavy construction. There are 11 major roads are under construction. I talked to taxi drivers. One of them told me that in normal traffic condition he could make 30 Yuan per hour. However, in traffic jam, he can only make 15 Yuan per hour. Bad traffic hurts their business of tax drivers although they are not as upset as I am about this. They are really nice people. They are taking the bad things for granted and are very adaptive (taking less rest at noon, working longer hours) to the ever-changing even unpredictable situations.

It is amazing that the government has so much money to conduct so many construction projects concurrently. As my classmate working in the government told me, the government income has been growing around 10% over the last few years.

Money is only one factor in the complicated issue of improving infrastructure. Everyone knows that undertaking too many road projects in the same time could jam the city. However, for a lot of people the priority is to make the deadline of World Coal Expo to be hold in middle September.

Spending big money to building roads would impress visitors attending the expo. However , not enough attention is paid to the management of the traffic: marking the lanes, adding traffic lights, educating citizens on traffic laws, enforcing traffic laws, etc.

I took two pictures of traffic, which can illustrate the problem.

The black car made left turn in front of a police car.

Unnecessary Traffic Jam