BEAUTIFUL DAY ON HERO MOUNTAIN

Monday morning, the 18th of April, Dave and I decided to check out Hero Mountain.  It's not far from where we live, and our neighbor, and fellow BYU China English Teacher, Don Gold told us that it was a nice hike. 

The above picture is the Hero Mountain Monument. It honors the dead of the battle on Hero Mountain.  

On our way to Hero Mtn. we went through an out-door market, and saw some really interesting sites:

They sell almost everything from underwear and socks to tools and birds.  In the bird section, they sold . . . . bird food of course!  Check out the bird food pictures below.

Near the birds, they were selling crickets.  This wasn't bird food.  These crickets were some kind of good-luck critter that you could buy to sit on your patio.  They also sold little individual cricket cages.   

These were not your average inch and a half long crickets.  These were big boys that were more like three to four inches long.

 They were selling kites here.  Really colorful!!

 This shows you a portion of the stairs going up the mountain.  It gave us some stimulating (huff and puff) exercise!  I would guess that we climbed the equivalent of a ten story building or so.  Keep in mind, I climb seven flights of stairs every day to get to my classroom -- so I know wherewith I speak.

 When we got to the top, we had some nice views.  Jinan is habitually smoggy, and the haze often obscures our views.  But the day of this hike it was a little less so.  Have a look:

 This view looks down onto the stadium that's near the "New World" Shopping area where we go frequently.  It's also very near the place I go to get a facial now and then.  We've never seen anyone going in for a soccer game.  We've never seen it in use.  But it's very big, and is nice looking.

 We're up on top of the Mountain here as you can see.