Walk - Traveling Thru History

3 Amazing Activities To Do In Banff

Erin — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 19:56:23 +0000

Banff is one of the most beautiful national parks in Canada. Here are the best ways to take in the scenery and enjoy the park's natural beauty. #TBIN

The post 3 Amazing Activities To Do In Banff first appeared on Traveling Thru History.

Kaniakapupu Ruins

Erin — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 07:04:13 +0000

Not far from the center of Honolulu lies the ruins known as Kaniakapupu (Singing of the Land Shells). Not much is known about the ruins or why the site was abandoned. Once the summer palace of King Kamehameha III and Queen Kalama, now all that’s left are broken walls and piles of stones. Further down in my post you can read all about what is known about this beautiful and sacred spot. But first, I have some bad news. ***Due to the recent vandalism of this sacred site, visitors are strictly prohibited. Anyone seen inside the watershed perimeter or attempting to enter the area will be arrested.*** When I visited the site, I’d been told by a local that it was okay for small groups to visit to pay their respects. The site is located on a restricted watershed, but he said officials were okay with the trespass because most visitors were Hawaiians paying respects or visitors who were interested in the culture of the site. I’d been nervous about going since it was a restricted area, but he assured me that since it was just me going there, that it would be okay. I saw some city workers nearby and they watched me walk in to the area, so I didn’t worry at all about being there. Now, though, due to the vandalism, anyone seen inside the perimeter of the watershed will be arrested. A Hawaii state official emailed me to ask that I remove all directions to the site in order to prevent further desecration. This is one of the roads I drove down to get to the site. It’s such a pretty drive. I wish I could tell you where it was, but it would tell you where the ruins are. As I’m going through this post and removing all directions for where to park, where the site is, how to access the site, and the pictures that clearly mark the entrance, tears are streaming down my face. The thoughtless, selfish, and ignorant act of one or two people has irreparably damaged this Hawaiian treasure and made it so locals cannot even go in to pay their respects to a site sacred to their culture. Whether it was a local or a tourist who defaced the ruins of Kaniakapupu, they’ve violated King Kamehameha III’s former summer home and destroyed the sanctity of the site where King Kamehameha I rested his forces during the Battle of Nu’uanu Pali. This site may not hold the importance for everyone that it does for the Hawaiian people, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to deface it. This is part of the path that leads to the ruins. The area is so serene and the wind through the bamboo provides a calming serenade as you walk the few short minutes to the site. It’s so sad that this beautiful and peaceful area is now being closed off to the public. It’s such a wonderful place to visit. The spirit there is strong and you can feel the sanctity of the area. I sat in the trees off to the side of Kaniakapupu for about an hour, just soaking it all in and absorbing the feeling that is there. It’s palpable, the sacredness of the ground and the trees. It brings about a feeling of humility and awe. Great things once happened there. You can just barely see the ruins through the trees here. I was so excited when I got my first glimpse. The pathway splits and I wasn’t sure which way to go, but another couple who came down the path said either one would take me to the ruins. The first time I went I took the path to the right. The second, to the left. Please, when you visit ancient sites, please show respect. Do not climb on the structures, no matter how crumbled and ‘ruined’ they already seem. Do not move things around. Do not dig things up. And, for heaven’s sake, do not EVER carve on them. Please be respectful. This beautiful site is now so very damaged and may never be free of the defilement that has been inflicted upon it. These marks may just seem like scratches on stone, but they are, in reality, the destruction and violation of the sanctity of a significant cultural treasure. My first real glimpse of the site. Kaniakapupu was originally named Luakaha (Place of Relaxation) and built sometime during the early 1840s. Nobody knows when, exactly, the palace was started or why it was abandoned, but it is known that the palace was completed in 1845 and once entertained royalty, celebrities and nobility. Even commoners were allowed to visit the summer palace on occasion. As for why or when the name what changed, there are no records. It is believed the site was chosen because it was already sacred due to it being one of the places King Kamehameha I rested his forces during the Battle of Nu’uanu Pali in 1795. This battle is one of, if not THE, most important battles in Hawaii’s history as it was key in King Kamehameha I’s efforts to unify all of the Hawaiian Islands under one rule. While there are no written records that indicate what land the Summer Palace encompassed, an archaeological survey done in 1999 shows the estimated extent of the grounds based on the remaining structures. The theory is that Kaniakapupu once covered 10 acres. [supsystic-gallery id=2 position=center] Records also indicate that on July 31, 1847, an estimated 10,000 people attended a luau to commemorate Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea (Restoration Day), a holiday celebrating Hawaii’s liberation from a 5-month British occupation in 1843. It is surmised that the luau was entirely outdoors and probably took place between the palace ruins and the heiau. After 1847, there are no other mentions of this summer palace until 1874 when a drawn map of the area indicates ‘old ruin’ where the summer palace is. It is a complete mystery why the palace as abandoned so soon after it was built. With the few parts of the palace that are remaining, historians and archaeologists are working to piece together the lost history of this sacred site. This is the stone walk that leads to the entrance of the main house, called a heiau. Upper class and royal families had stone walkways put in front of their homes as a sign of status. These stones would have made a smooth walkway right up to the steps of a porch, had there been one. If Kaniakapupu followed Hawaiian tradition, it would have been a one-room structure with an elevated wrap-around porch that people would sit on in the evenings. The stone you see all around the structure is basalt, volcanic rock formed from rapidly cooling lava. Hawaiian royalty, called Ali’i, had their homes built upon a layer of basalt to denote the royal status of the residence. Along with elevating the residence above that of ‘common’ homes, this material was considered sacred and only royalty could use it. The placard you see in front of the entrance reads: Kaniakapupu Summer Palace of King Kamehameha III and his Queen Kalama Completed in 1845 it was the scene of entertainment of foreign celebrities the feasting of chiefs and commoners. The greatest of these occasions was a luau attended by an estimated ten thousand people celebrating Hawaiian Restoration Day in 1847. For the luau, records indicate there were two long lanais, or open-sided verandas, set on the edges of an open area. The floors were covered with rushes and they were divided into numerous booths. Before dinner, the guests were entertained with ancient games including spear-throwing, lua (the art of bone-breaking), and hakoko (wrestling). According to records, the meal was quite an event itself. Guests were treated to a lavish feast of 271 hogs, 482 large calabashes of poi, 602 chickens, 3 whole oxen, 2 barrels of salt pork, 2 barrels of biscuit, 3,125 salt fish, 1,820 fresh fish, 12 barrels of cabbage, 2 barrels of onions, 80 bunches of bananas, 55 pineapples, 10 barrels of potatoes, 55 ducks, 82 turkeys, 2,245 coconuts, 4,000 heads of taro, 180 squid, oranges, limes, grapes and various other fruits. Seriously, thinking about eating all that food is making me feel like I’m gaining 50lbs. I can’t imagine eating all of that. But considering there were over 10,000 people, it almost doesn’t sound like there was enough. During the feast a group of older women sat near King Kamehameha III and chanted songs in honor of him and his ancestors. Their chants included the traditional storytelling gestures of swaying arms. Once the feast was over and many of the guests had left, younger women performed traditional hula dances for the king and his remaining guests. Wandering the grounds, it was hard to imagine where all that would have gone. But I’m guess most of the trees that are there now weren’t there at the time. This is the left side of the heiau. According to the archaeological survey, this door would have led to a stone path that went to a detached kitchen. This is all that’s left of the detached kitchen site. Only one kitchen to cook a meal for 10,000 people. I’ve cooked for 30 people before in my decent-sized kitchen, which is bigger than this kitchen area. What a feat to produce that large meal from this small area. Major props to those who prepared that feast. This is the doorway at the back of the heiau. Traditional Hawaiian homes were built in a way to allow maximum air flow. This meant doors on all sides to let breezes carry the hot summer air out of the house, though Hawaiians spent most of their time outside since it was usually cooler out than in. These are a few different angles of the inside. For being a one-room home, this place is pretty big. I think it’s bigger than the apartment I currently live in. Looking out the front door. I wonder what the view would have been in 1845. It’s sad that this is all that’s left of the summer palace of Kaniakapupu. It may not have been excessively grand by our standards today when it was built, but I bet it was beautiful. Along with the main heiau, archaeologists belive there was another heiau, but it is not known who for. Perhaps it was for all the people who looked after the royal family? The stones seen below are believed to have been part of the foundation of the unknown heiau. To the right is where archaeologists have determined a garden would have been. This is looking at the far side of the palace heiau from the unknown heiau. Somewhere around the area between the two heiaus, or perhaps behind them both, 10,000 people sat for a luau in 1847. Can you imagine that many people fitting in this area? It’s sad to me that this is all that’s left of a place that was once so important to the Hawaiian people. It’s still a sacred site, but many have forgotten about it. There are a few who still come to pay respects and leave tokens of respect at the site, but not as many as once did. I wish there were more records so we could find out what the entire site looked like and why it was abandoned. Do you have any theories as to why it was abandoned?

The post Kaniakapupu Ruins first appeared on Traveling Thru History.

Visiting the Great Wall of China

Erin — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 00:50:24 +0000

I’ll tell you now, before I get into my post, that this post has a LOT of pictures. I hope you enjoy my journey along the top of the Great Wall of China! To pick up where my last post left off, after we hung up with Kevin we wandered around the Beijing Olympic Stadium for a while. The tour company called us several times, asking if we wanted them to come get us, where we were, what had upset us (haha, that one was funny) and if we could work out a deal. We weren’t about to tell them where we were and we definitely didn’t want to attempt another ride with them, so we just kept waiting on Kevin to call us back. And goofing off. I mean, even if we’re somewhat stranded in the middle of Beijing and a bit stressed out from our day going so crazy, we can still have fun, right? After about an hour Kevin called us and said he’d found someone who could take us to the Great Wall. The price would be 600RMB and there would be no superfluous stops along the way. We were ecstatic to have a ride to the Wall, regardless of the price increase, and quickly went to where he said his friend would meet us. He was there when we got there and within minutes we were on our way. I feel terrible that none of us remember his name, but I think part of it was that we were all so frazzled and stressed about the morning’s events. He was really nice, so I’m sure he will forgive us. From this point on, though, almost everything went just the way we wanted it to. Kevin’s friend was really great. He drove us straight to the Great Wall and chatting with us along the way. He was very nice and very friendly and, most importantly, didn’t try to con us out of any money. After an hour of driving and feeling more relaxed than we had all day, we arrived at the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. While the Great Wall was first begun around 700 BC, the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall was built during the 6th century AD. After a few hundred years it began to crumble and in 1569 this section of the wall was repaired with some parts being entirely rebuilt. On the east lies the Gubeikou section and on the west is the Juyongguan Pass. Of all the sections of the Great Wall, the Mutianyu section is the best-preserved, most unique and had the largest scale of construction, though it is one of the lesser-visited areas. After a quick lunch and figuring out a game plan, we took off to ascend the Great Wall. We’d considered climbing the stairs up to the top, but there are over 4,000 of them. As in-shape as we are, 4,000 steps in a row is a lot and we didn’t want to wear ourselves out before we’d seen anything. What’s the point of using all of our energy getting up the wall and then not having any left to explore it? So, up the chair lift we went and got to see our first view of the Wall. The first thing I noticed about the wall when we got to the top is how level it is not. You’d think the Great Wall would be flat with gentle grades, but it’s really quite steep at some parts. Honestly, by the end of the day I was thinking they should change the name from The Great Wall of China to The Great Staircase of China. Seems more fitting, considering how many steps you have to climb.The entirety of the Great Wall, including branch-offs, spans roughly 13,171 miles. The Mutianyu section is the longest section of the Great Wall and runs about 14 miles in length. No, we did not walk the entire thing. lol. The section we visited is flanked by two “no-tourist” areas, so it is only 1.5 miles in length. But that’s a little misleading because if you take the chairlift up, it deposits you a little over a quarter of a mile from the end. If you want to walk the entire thing, you have to go all the way to the right for about .3 miles and then go the full 1.5 miles the way to the other end. If you choose to go down the tobaggan ride just past the end (the tower just before the wall cuts left and goes straight up), that’s another .06 miles, so in reality you end up doing 1.86 miles if you go from one end to the other. We decided to go back down where we came up, so including the 1.2 mile backtracking, we did about 3 miles overall. It wasn’t too bad. A bit hot, but we had hats and plenty of water, so we were fine. In addition to the main wall, there are various offshoot sections that have not been repaired and are off limits to tourists. Some you can walk down and others you can’t. Someone wanted to make sure the world knew they were here. Vandalism? Or a 6th century version of writing your name in cement?Overall there are 23 watchtowers that dot the top of the Wall. They are spaced roughly 328 feet (100 meters) apart. The interior of the watchtowers seems sparse now, but I imagine there were tables, wall hangings, cots, a warm fire, maybe a rug or two and other bits of comfort for those who had to live here.The neverending stairs of the Great Wall of China. Seriously. There were more stair sections than flat sections on the wall.When I see how dense the forest is around the Wall, it makes me wonder why anyone would want to attack through this area and how people on the wall could see the attackers in the forest. Maybe that’s why this section is the best preserved? It had the fewest number of attackers and therefore the least damage?Getting to the top of the watchtowers isn’t too hard. While it’s possible to walk across the slant to get up there, they’ve blocked that part off so you can only go up via the stairs inside the watchtower.This is Zheng Guan Tai Pass. This layout of three towers, as well as the interior connection of the towers, is something that is only seen at this section of the wall. For some reason, I didn’t get any shots of the actual pass itself, just shots with the pass off to the side. Oh well. It’s not a terrible shot.The hidden red door! We climbed down an area that I don’t think we were supposed to and found this red door. Not sure where it goes, but I thought it was kinda cool. Perhaps it’s a magical door that takes people to Narnia! Now I’m sad we didn’t try to open it. 🙁 One thing I found curious about the wall was the shift and tilt. It would be flat one moment and then sharply angled within a few steps. With as masterful as the Chinese are with their buildings, I’m sure this wasn’t an accident or the result of careless construction. Can’t find anything about it online, so I’m curious about why the level of the wall changes so much.Looking back at where we started. We began at a landing just to the right of where I took this picture and then climbed up to the watchtower at the top of the hill before turning around and coming back towards the opposite end. It’s about .3 miles from this point to the far tower.Far off remnants of fortification branches.One of the interesting facts I learned about the Great Wall is that the Mutianyu section was designed with defensive fortifications on both sides of the wall. The battlements have merlons (crenellated parapets) and arrow loops on both the interior and exterior of the watchtowers and the ramparts.Signal towers dot the mountains near the wall.Seeing the views from the watchtowers, I think I would have been okay with living there.The Mutianyu section of the Great Wall was built mainly with granite instead of the brick, tile, limestone and rammed earth that make up other parts of the wall. This is one of the reasons that it is the best-preserved section of the Wall.This is more of what I had imagined the top of the wall to be like: smooth and flat with sloping curves. Not the mountain of stairs we ended up climbing. Interestingly, the Wall varies between 23-26 feet high and 13-17 feet wide. I had expected it to be tall (which it is), but hadn’t expected it to be so wide. It’s wide enough that two small cars could drive past each other in some parts! Almost to the end! The tower in the upper left corner is where we turned around and went back. We could have gotten down off the wall by that watchtower, but we wanted to go back down by where our driver was waiting for us. Sometimes it felt like the Wall was never going to end. lol The mountains in this area are just beautiful. I would love to go back in the fall and see how fiery the mountains become when the leaves change colors. So close! And this was the end. The last tower of our journey. If we pressed on and went through the tower, we would have ended up at an area where people could ride down to the bottom of the mountain. But that’s not what we wanted to do, so we turned around and trekked back to where we started. With all of our stops for pictures and such, it took us about two and a half hours from the time we got off the chair lifts until we reached this tower. On the way back to the start, we came across this sign. It reads: Founded in 1404, number 14 tower was [a] border command post at that time. Though these tower[s] were in different shapes, such as a broad bedroom in the middle, its circumference was surrounded by corridors–. gyrus shaped is the common feature.” According to Miriam-Webster online, a gyrus is “a convoluted ridge between anatomical grooves”. Anyone want to take a guess at what the sign is trying to say? We also went down to explore this tower. It looked like all the rest of them. lol No clue what this sign means. Google has come up empty.Almost back to the beginning. In the cradle of the mountains you can see a valley with a small village in it. That is Mutianyu Village and before the Wall became a popular tourist destination, this village was struggling. Even though the Mutianyu section is one of the lesser-visited sections, there are enough tourists here each year to keep the village solvent. There’s even a resort there now. I can’t find anything out about this guy, but he is pretty cool. And, of course, while we were there we had to have photos of us at the Wall. This one was at the beginning when we walked to the end closest to where the chair lifts dropped us off. I’m only a little bit sweaty at this point. Gah. I am SOOOOOO glad Troy doesn’t have this awful goatee anymore. The one he has now is trimmed and well-kept. This was about halfway from the end where our first picture was taken to the far peak where we could go no further. As you can see, I’m very VERY sweaty. lol. It was August and very hot with high humidity. We were very happy we had lots of water in our backpacks.Getting up the Wall we rode a chair lift. We could have done that on the way down, but decided it would be so much more fun if we rode the tobagan! I took this video of my ride down the slide. Towards the end you can hear me yell at someone to slow down....

The post Visiting the Great Wall of China first appeared on Traveling Thru History.