Sky Ladder (Jhushan Suspension Bridge)!

 Today was a beautiful day for a hike! Kailey, Liz, Karyn and I woke up bright and early (around 6:45) to prepare ourselves for the hike we would go on with Kitty, George and Grace.  (We also went to Sitou Forest with them, which you can read about if you click here.)  It took about 2 hours to get to our destination!

The first five photos were taken on our drive to our destination! I love that the fog is below us!

 Look at the fog and the tea fields!  There is a world below that fog! 

Grace told us that Taiwan tea grows well in the area that we were in because it needs colder air and humidity to grow and it had both of those things.  We saw tea fields all over the place!
 

More beautiful fog pictures from above!

 See the treeless areas on the mountains?!  Well those patches are tea fields!

 On top of the world! 

Out of the car! It's funny, but in order to get to where we wanted to go, we had to travel downhill first.  Let's just say there were a lot of stairs! Did I mention there were a lot of stairs?! ;)

This was on our trail to where we wanted to go!  Don't you love this cluster of bamboo trees?! :)  It's pretty awesome isn't it?!

 Our destination!  The Jhushan Suspension Bridge (aka Tianti Sky Ladder)!  This bridge is huge!  It's not just any ordinary suspension bridge!  It's 136 meters long and has 208 steps on it!

"When you view it from afar, it resembles a ladder from the sky into the valley, connecting the sky and earth--a sight which inspires the imagination." I got this quote from a website.  Click here if you want to go to the website and read a little more about the bridge. 

 On the sky ladder! 

 George, Grace and Kitty!  The awesome and generous little family that brought us to the suspension bridge! 

 On the suspension bridge overlooking the river below!

 The view from one side of the bridge!

 The view from the other side of the bridge! It's gorgeous!

 Look at those tiny steps!  (It wasn't like that the whole way, but there were a lot of steps.)  We could definitely feel the sway of the bridge beneath us and I liked it!   

 My feet looking out below!

 Do you see the face in the mountain?!

 As I said earlier, the hike to the suspension bridge was down and we went even farther down to this much smaller suspension bridge!  This bridge swayed more than the huge one.  But that just added to the authenticity of the suspension bridge :)

 Our hike down some more stairs, after the second suspension bridge! Did I mention there were lots of stairs?!

This was even farther down than the second suspension bridge! It was beautiful with the water, waterfalls, huge boulders and half-circle green mountain in front of us!

 The same place as the picture above!  Looking up!

 See Karyn down there by the boulder?!  Those rocks were huge!  George and Grace told us some of those rocks had fallen recently, because they were able to go farther down and sit by the water not that long ago.  We definitely could not sit by the water. 

 Below the second suspension bridge!

 We stopped to eat lunch on these benches in the shade! 

The whole group minus me!
Left to right: Karyn, Kailey, Luke (one of Grace's students from the university she teaches at), Grace, Kitty, George, and Liz

 Look at this awesome little creature on the path!

 After we went past the second suspension bridge we hiked back up a little ways and went to this waterfall!  Those pipes helped direct the water down the other cliff not too far out of this picture!

 On our way back to the car!  The bridge was a lot more crowded on the way back and it swayed a lot more too!  We were really glad we came earlier rather than later because of the crowds! 

The hike back was lovely! I got my workout for the day!  That's for sure!

We stopped a lot and took breaks, because did I mention there were lots of stairs?! ;)  There definitely were flat parts too with just trail and no stairs, but a lot of it was stairs!

Poinsettias in the wild!  I had no idea they grew on trees like this!  They sure are beautiful!  Mom, I thought you'd like this picture!
I really enjoyed the hike! It was amazingly beautiful!

The sun was really bright and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open ;)
 

 After we got done with our hike and started heading home, we decided to take a little detour to Jiji!  This is what we saw in Jiji.  It's a collapsed Buddhist Temple from the 921 (September 21) Earthquake in 1999. It measured a 7.3 on the Richter scale! The earthquake was the second largest recorded earthquake in Taiwanese history. It killed more than 2,000 people and seriously injured more than 10,000. Anyone who was here at the time remembers exactly what happened that day. 

This temple just collapsed like this.  A lot of the statues still stand on top.  It's actually quite amazing how it just collapsed like that!

 Through this hole, people were able to climb in and get the statues from inside, out!  It's also amazing how it still stands and they were able to go in and get stuff out after this happened. 

In front of the collapsed temple!

After Jiji, we went home! On the way home, I was tired but I stayed awake so that hopefully I will sleep well tonight!  It was a lovely day today!   I enjoyed every moment of our little hike! (Yes, even the stairs!)  I am so grateful for my legs so that I can hike! I am so grateful for the beauty of the earth! I am so grateful for George, Grace and Kitty being kind and generous to us!