What place can I go to for a few hours and escape the city? A mountain. One nice fall afternoon Denny and I hiked a mountain in Qingdao, China. It was the perfect antidote for the feeling of a mini vacation and a dose of “fresh air”.

Below is a photo journal of our hike.

 This picture shows part of the bay of the Yellow Sea.

My husband and I. I love the timer feature. No one else was hiking that day. The mountain was ours. A woman has to wonder, “Did my husband secretly rent it out for the afternoon?”

Do I have any botanist reading my blog? What kind of berries are these? I joked with Denny that they were the Nightlock berries from The Hunger Games.

This mountain had German dugouts that were placed there for a war.

We were “making plans to make plans”. What movie is that line from? We had a discussion of planning to meditate on the past year and making goals for 2013.

This is a view looking at the trail we hiked.

This was the mountain we hiked.

I carried down a large tree branch and jammed it into our cab to decorate our home for Christmas. It was fun seeing all the facial expressions while we drove by.

If you need a dose of a mini vacation seek the peacefulness of a mountain!