We woke up the next morning to very cloudy skies and cool temperatures. It felt refreshing! That and because both girls slept with my mom! We had a slow morning - I used their kitchen to cook eggs and sausage while we made ourselves some instant coffee(#classy). p.s. who has been missing my hashtags ;)?
Even with the clouds, the views still took my breath away.
We could see the low cloud coverage starting to clear and we were hopeful for some blue skies later in the day.
Loved the wildflowers!
But, I particularly love this girl!
Our plan for the day was to explore the park (and hopefully ride some horses!). We made our way to the park, bought tickets and waited in line for the bus and made it through easy peasy.
The bus line was so short (for China!).
On the bus drive, I started to get more and more excited!
Pumped!
Ahhhh, finally there and it was just stunning in person.
Just another twirl in her twirl around the world archives (one day I am going to have to go back and put them all together - I bet it is pretty fabulous).
I felt like we got so lucky to see snow in July!!
I am big into finding your happy place no matter where that might be - and while I might say that my happy place in Asia is in Thailand, I think I found my happy place in China! We can't wait to go back with friends!!
We found the horses and after a lot of negotiation and antics, my mom and Emma got on their horse while Everly and I got on our horse (Wes decided to explore on foot).
We saw a Tibetan temple.
The flags are prayer flags strung together.
After about five minutes on our horse, we found ourselves getting off and taking a walk until we could meet back up with our horses (our driver was with us in case you were curious).
Just like that, the clouds were covering up the mountain range again.
There were waterfalls every which way we looked. Some grand, some tiny and some all in between.
Emma and Nonni's horse went through several different names during their time together.
This picture is out of order, but cute (me and Ev's at the beginning of the ride).
We got off at our rest place and took a few pictures.
And then we asked if we could have our 30 minute break at a lake that had a toilet and snacks instead of in the middle of nowhere... so we went back to the lake.
Her legs weren't working ;).
Right after this picture, things got a little dicey. There was a huge misunderstanding. It had been around 25 minutes so we went back to find our horses... Turns out our horses had left us!! We thought we had communicated that we had just wanted our break in a different location (still the same amount of time) and they had communicated that if we took our break in another place, the horses would no longer be ours. This was a big bummer. Especially because one child, not being named, was not interested in walking one bit. And I might have been a little upset. And we were far from our meeting point. Boo boo boo.
These two were troopers. They sang songs and made the best of it. I carried one child on my shoulders about 2 kilometers and I was not happy about it :).
Ahhh, it is kind of funny now, but trust me - it was not funny at the time.
We recovered with rest, wine, more rounds of Uno and a hot pot :).
