Stone Forest, Yunnan, China

Kathy took me to see a natural park with unusual stone formations, called the Stone Forest.

It was a fun outing. Kathy had been there before and knew there weren’t many places to eat there, so we packed a picnic. Another woman, Nancy, who was visiting from Texas, with us. Kathy hired a van to take us there. It took about 2 hours to get there from Kunming.

 We started out in an area Kathy hadn’t been before. The trails took us through narrow gorges and up and down lots and lots of steps. Most of the time we didn’t know where we were.

It was raining a little, so when we found a picnic table with 3 dry seats we decided to stop and have our picnic. We had ham and cheese sandwiches, Mandarin oranges, and dried peas.

We put the tablecloth on the dry half of the table. After our lunch we walked around that area some more squeezing at times through narrow openings in the rock. When we came to a fork sometimes Kathy and I would go out in two directions to try to decide which one we should take.  At one point I headed up some steps to explore and Kathy went down from the same point.  I came to some more smaller steps and kept going. 

In the photo above you see three round steps and then can just make out the next few going up.  The whiter spots are the steps. At the top of those I came to this narrow “bridge” across to another rock.  I’m not generally afraid of heights, but this bridge was a bit scary. It was a long way down on either side.

From the top I had a view in all directions over the stone forest.

Here’s the path I was standing on. It’s only about 8” wide in the narrow section.

I went back down to follow Kathy on the other trail. Here you see Kathy and Nancy in red and blue on the trail below me.

After this Nancy decided she’d had enough, so we took her back to the entrance and Kathy and I went back to a different area of the forest. On the way we saw this little guy posing for a photo, so I snapped one too.

In this area, there is a lake with trails and bridges zig-zagging through it.

The rain stopped and the sun came out.

 This is called Elephant Rock.

Then we climbed to this pagoda overlooking this section of the park.

Here’s a view looking down on the tops of the stones.

And looking out across the “forest” of stones.

If you go visit Kathy in Kunming, she will probably take you to see this forest too.  It’s well worth the trip.