Memorial Day weekend in Danyang

This weekend we traveled with friends to the beautiful town of Danyang. Set along a river and beneath some impressive mountains, there was a lot to do outdoors in nature there. We hoped to do a ton, but a giant rainstorm rolled in and it’s been raining for days.

Danyang is well known for being a popular destination for paragliding because of the picturesque mountainous views. And that was to be the creme de la creme of our weekend adventures. But with the rainy weather, we didn’t know if it could happen.

This trip all started with Leasa throwing out the idea of going sky diving for her birthday last month- to which I said yes to! But when that didn’t happen, I was delighted to come up with paragliding has a Plan B option.

And paragliding DID happen! Lots of starts and stops, delays and reschedules, and even a full on cancellation- but the weather cooperated just enough to get all 13 of us up flying!

In the end we ended up coming home a day early, but I’m so glad we went and didn’t cancel altogether like I was tempted to do when I saw the forecast. Lots of new memories made!

We drove 3+ hours in the rain but when we got to town, the rain hadn’t yet started there so we were a tad hopeful about our paragliding that afternoon… But during lunch at this awesome Texas bbq place called the Cowboy Grill, it started raining…

Big kids table! We sure are going to miss traveling with the Walgren’s here. They move this week. Sob, sob.

After lunch they called to reschedule our paragliding until the following morning. So we decided to go explore the Gosu Cave.

This was a huge limestone cave- with hundreds of stairs!

Because almost everything to do in Danyang is outside, unfortunately we were not the only ones with the brilliant idea to visit the cave on a rainy day to stay dry.

There were many places along the path that were low & narrow so we’d have to get a little flexible to get through!

For dinner we went to the local market to try the black garlic fried chicken that the area is known for- and it was really delicious. 

With so many locals wearing dark clothing, I love that I can usually spot Brian quickly in crowded places here!

The weather was so awesome on Saturday night- we had a picnic dinner and played cards. The next morning Macy told me that the girls could hear us from their room on the 7th floor.

We decided to go out for a stroll- and took a short cut, over/through the fence-

Our hotel was not the same Edelweiss we all knew and loved in Germany-

When there is a flip down seat at a red light, you sit if you are Brian-

Our hotel was on the river, which was colorfully lit up for miles at night. Not the moon, but a skywalk-

We woke up Sunday to a light rain- which was disheartening because our paragliding reservation was at 9am. We needed to leave at 8am for paragliding and at 8:05 they called to cancel. We went anyway. When we arrived, the flog was extremely thick and there was no visibility off the cliff.

But- people were still launching! So we thought maybe we would have a chance if we just waited around for the fog to clear.

The weather seemed to want to cooperate. Sometimes dry, sometimes drizzling, with occasional partial clearing so we could see some mountain peaks- both near and far.

We were all SO ready- 

Taking cover from the rain. Would this ever happen?

So many starts and stops. 

Even from this point when we thought Kate was a GO, her jump got called off. 

Tate was so lucky to have met Drew a couple weeks before school started this summer. They’ve lived just a few houses apart, played on the same XC & wrestling teams, have classes together, go to youth group together and now have paraglided together! It sure is going to suck when Dew & his fam head off to their next duty station in NC this week.

Even my very reluctant, afraid of heights, “I’ll never do that” husband was going to be disappointed if it all got canceled.

I have a 5 minute video that shows how quick we launched- and I just had to keep running. Which I had to verbally remind myself of apparently. We’d seen two failed launches- and I did NOT want that to be me. I realized while watching this video that either I was so in awe that I just couldn’t express myself well, or I have a very small vocabulary.

Somehow, all 14 of us got to paraglide that day and it was AMAZING! All the starts and stops made us want this experience even more. The clouds helped with the fear of heights and honestly, at points I was a tad bit bored!

Danyang has several of these old narrow one way tunnels that display fun light shows as you drive through

Danyang seemed like a cool outdoorsy place that we'd like to spend more time exlporing for sure.