Since I lost a buncha photos (and oh–!!!–man, I keep remembering more!), I’m really trying to be diligent about posting the ones on hand as soon as possible.

All of the photos on this page were taken on our first day out of Wuwei.  We were going to take the tracks, but we discovered a back way on small roads.  Nevermind that the very first day we missed our first turn-off; we realized it after only a few kilometers and made our way back no problem.

Here’s the first little village we came across; had we gone the right way, we wouldn’t have walked through it!

Here we’ve found the right road, and as you can see, the kids who were walking with us ran when I fished out my camera.

Not sure if this is a barn of some sort or a home, but it’s definitely different.

This man was nice enough to pose for me, and broke into a grin after I’d taken the photo!

We came upon what I thought might some kind of State-run farm; the bales of hay and red flags with writing on ‘em intrigued me.  As we neared it, Ig turned around and said, “Whatever you do, don’t look left.”

I of course immediately looked left, only to find out that I’d just snapped a photo of some kind of military training grounds!  With an uncountable number of soldiers watching us walk by, I was shocked when they all started waving and yelling “Hello!”  :~)

Not long after that we passed through a villiage where the kiddies were just getting out of school.  Normally this is kind of fun, but at least a hundred school kids (mostly adolescent boys) followed us for over an hour screaming, “Lao wei (old outsider)!  Lao wei!!” 

Here’s a couple shots at the end of the day.