There are still a few more Florida Keys photos to post – they should be all up by the end of this weekend.

We did two dive trips while in the keys – one to a reef called Alligator reef, and another out to a marine preserve at Looe Key. I got one of these inexpensive DiCaPac cases for my camera to try to take some underwater shots. Since the water filters out red light, the pictures look very blue right out of the camera, so I did some color correction.

Bahia Honda State Park has the best beach on the whole island chain : )

On the next island down the chain is a preserve for Key Deer, which are a dwarf subspecies of white-tailed deer found only in the Keys. When we first visited in was broad daylight – not a good time to see wildlife but an okay time to take a quick hike through the pine hammock. We came back around sunset and managed to spot a few miniature bucks : )

For Thanksgiving we spent a week in the Florida Keys with Matt, Gina, Andrea, and Steven. We stayed in a house in Marathon, on Boot Key, about halfway from mainland Florida to Key West. The photos below are from the travel along Hwy 1, which runs to Key West, and from around Marathon.

Marathon is home to a sea turtle ‘hospital’, where they provide rescue injured sea turtles, provide care and a safe place for recovery, and either eventual release into the wild, or for turtles that won’t survive in the wild, a permanent residence place in a salt water pool.

We were hit with a slow-moving Nor’easter on the Friday & Saturday before Xmas, and still ran a race that morning! Now there’s well over a foot of snow in most places and everyone is digging out. Here’s some of what we did on Sunday.

I visited two sections of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall, at Huanghuacheng and at Mutianyu. Huanghuacheng is a more ‘wild’ area of the Great Wall (although it obviously has undergone significant restoration). It was nearly devoid of people, except for a group of Chinese tourists we saw across the valley. Mutianyu is a more touristy area, complete with ski lift and slideway. We has also intended to visit the Jiankou area, which is supposed to be quite wild and rugged, but due to road flooding we were unable to visit. If I ever get another chance to visit the Beijing area, Jiankou is very high on my list of things to see.

The Huanghuacheng Great Wall

The Mutianyu Great Wall

The Forbidden City was the residence of the emperor and the central site of Chinese government from the Ming dynasty (1400s) to the early 20th century.

Before I left, Derek challenged me to take a photo of everything I ate while in China, so that I could remember to tell him about it. So I did!

The Summer Palace, and retreat for the emperors and empresses built in the mid-1700s just outside of Beijing to the northwest.

The Temple of Buddhist Virtue and Tower of Buddhist Incense

Bicycling remains one of the most popular ways of getting around Beijing, although automobile ownership is soaring. The variety of bicycles is astonishing, although of all the bicycles I saw, only a single one was the drop handlebar racing/touring variety. I was especially impressed by the flat-bed tricycles for hauling heavy loads, with boxes piled high on the back, sometimes to twice the rider’s height. Also, I don’t think I saw a single bike helmet…

BTW: One of the movies I watched on the flight over was ‘Beijing Bicycle’ (which, due to the awards it has won, I had actually heard of before I watched it). It was a fairly depressing movie, so I don’t recommend it unless you’re into artsy foreign films (and I mean *really* into artsy foreign films. If you have just a regular amount of interest in artsy foreign cinema I would recommend Wong Kar Wai’s ‘Happy Together’. Although that movie does have a sad ending too, now that I think about it).