China - the wedding

The wedding was fantastic.  A lot of symbolism and ritual and wonderful to see.  The couple had to serve tea to the parents, cut a lock of each others hair and a few other things that are not part of an American wedding. Fanny, the bride wore 3 different dresses.  A western style white gown,

Then a traditional red for the actual ceremony.  Red is the color of happiness in China, white is the color for sadness and mourning.

Ben even wore the traditional wedding attire.

Love the head gear!

And finally a dress for the reception.  Don't ask about Ben's hat.  I'll just say it has a Polish tradition, not Chinese.

After all that she changed again and went out to party with Ben, family and friends.

It was a beautiful ceremony and we are glad we were there.

An RVers dream day

We stopped in Mosses Lake, Washington for one or two nights, we weren't sure.  We were staying at an Elks lodge and really had a few days to kill.  The first evening I went into the lodge to chat with the local members.  I learned that instead of continuing east on I-90 to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, there was another way.

So we left the next morning and headed north on 17 to Soap Lake not really knowing what to expect.  Soap Lake is a small community built around the lake.  The lake is very high in mineral content and is nick named the "Healing Water".  Native Americans used to come here for the healing effects of the water.  The lake has since been diluted with irrigation run off and other "modern" issues.  But people still come to enjoy the water, pack themselves with mud and enjoy the day.  We were in the RV and pulling the Jeep so we were not sure what we might be able to do because of parking restrictions.  But we got to Soap Lake and found a huge parking lot right by the lake.  We took a quick walk to the water and said "lets go in".

Here we sat for about an hour getting mineralized...is that a word?

From there we continued along a beautiful drive beside the lake and river.  Then we came across Dry Falls.  This is the largest water fall in the world except it is dry.  As glaciers formed melted and reformed they blocked water fro the Columbia River valley and it was forced to this area.  There was so much water and such great force that massive area were flooded, and great cliffs were carved.

We continued the drive on Hwy 155 toward Grand Coulee Dam.  Again the scenery was fantastic, the drive easy and the day beautiful.  We toured Grand Coulee Dam and learned it is about 3 times bigger than Hover dam.  It is wider, produces more electricity, controls more water and except for being slightly shorter is much bigger in every category.

On the drive to the dam we had seen several campgrounds and lots of boon docking spots along Bank Lake.  So after the the dam tour, we drove back and camped by the lake for the night.

This is the sun set.

This, to us, was a perfect day.  Easy drive, beautiful scenery,  plenty of time and places to stop, topped off by boon docking by a lake.  All this because of a few beers with the Moses Lake Elks!

Chian part 3

We are back!  What a great time we had.  We took over 1200 pictures and I promise to not post all of them. I'm not sure how I'm going to structure this but I see a series of posts on various parts of our trip.  These will take some time as we need to edit the pics first. 

We did have a great time.  The first part of the tour was with a tour company and we had 8 other folks with us.  Our guide was amazing in many ways.  The next part we spent 4 days in Shanghai on our own then we flew to Shenyang to meet up with the Beatty family and participate in the wedding.

An odd thing about the international date line.  We left Beijing at 4 in the afternoon and arrived in Seattle at 1 in the afternoon of the same day.  So we arrived before we left!  Awesome!

I'll post China info as pictures become available.