As we walked further along the wall, I just kept thinking over and over, “Why did they build this thing?”  The terrain is so steep anyways, the wall doesn’t seem like it adds too much of a barrier that the mountains didn’t already provide.  I read the wall didn’t do so much to keep people out as much as that it was useful for the towers where signals could be sent over long distances.  But that just took me back to my question—why did they build the wall?  Couldn’t they have just made the towers?  It would have saved a lot of time, I thought.  Anyways, I’m glad the wall was build though, at the moment, simply because it looks really cool.    The hike today was really great though: a little bit of up and a little bit of down, and a lot of stairs.  It wasn’t too wimpy, but not too strenuous either.  It’s one thing to go on a dirt trail, but being able to walk on a giant wall provided an excellent vantage point as we were high above the trees.  Additionally, there were no switchbacks, just a path that kept going forward.

The weather (overcast) was favorable.  Though Matt and I both still worked up quite a sweat, we both knew that if it had been sunny out our leisurely hike would have been much more tiring.  In addition to the mild temperature, the other unexpected part of our day was the lack of crowds at the wall.  Sometimes it truly felt like just Matt and I hanging out on our own section of the Great Wall.