To make up for yesterday, the gods of geography have smiled upon me and today is basically all downhill through twisty turny river valleys.  It turns out that I wasn't all that far from Le'ansi Township and, if I hadn't stopped at the village where I stopped, would very likely have made it before sunset. Be that as it is, three of the five hotels and guesthouses (including the only one on the map) that I can see as I pass through town are very clearly very closed and the other two are uncertainly open. If I'd pushed, I might have found myself just as sick and miserable and cold and in a situation where I'd either be hitchiking or begging lodging.

Overall, when comparing my "tours with tents" to my "tours without tents" I'm strongly in the camp of preferring less luggage (i.e. no tent) but there are certainly benefits to be had from having a tent and my increasing tendency to go to ever more remote locations that don't necessarily have lodging is certainly one of those benefits.

Overall, however, the biggest thing I'm finding is how much crap I really don't need when I pack smart and do my laundry every day. I'd say that this has crept out into my "non bike" travel but that's not really a fair comparison since I didn't have much in the way of money for non bike travel until well after I started touring and the sheer amount of stuff I cram into my 'flying to China' luggage has almost certainly gotten me quietly opted out of Customs checks by people who looked at the xrays and didn't want to deal with the stuffplosion.

I pass by my first specifically Earthquake related tourism site today. It's not just big, it's huge. It's the sort of place you'd have to be making a destination rather than the sort of place you stop by briefly. Other than a bit of landslide with part of a building sticking out of it, nothing is visible from the road I'm on and, after a circuit of the parking lot and some time spent trying to mentally remap the not very well done tourist map onto reality, I keep going.

After lunch in Guanzhuang Town, I find a very spiff looking Earthquake Museum (which, of course, even on the maps where it shows up, it wasn't classified as "tourist site") but there's a very steep set of stairs up to the entrance where I would look sheepish and ask nicely if they'd let me put my bike and luggage inside so I pass on it as well.

Zhuyuan is showing up as the largest town in my general vicinity with the most lodging and least complicated navigation both for today's riding and tomorrow's travel onward so I point myself in that direction and, given the day's general tendency to be down down down and down, I get there nice and early despite the two big climbs and a tunnel which I get after Malu Town.

Since most of China is constantly upgrading and redeveloping itself, you wouldn't necessarily realize at first glance that Zhuyuan is one of those places that was completely rebuilt after the Earthquake because of the Earthquake. However, even if you don't stop to read all the dedication signs, half the roads and bridges and embankments in town are named after the companies and cities that donated funds to make things happen. There's an excess of infrastructure for the current population, however, and it does not—despite what people tell me—seem to be a recent occurrence related to expressway construction or the season.

After passing through the Zhuyuan Development Zone and the active area around the bus station, I make the mistake of heading across the water to 'downtown' Zhuyuan. I have to circle around the streets four or five times to find sufficient candidates for open hotels and restaurants to even start thinking about dinner. The style of the advertising and the amount of sun fade on some of the closed up places makes me think it's been at least three or four years since the bars and barbecues and karaoke parlors were open.

My hotel owner seems to be a mom with a husband and a kid but she's also wearing knee high boots, go-go shorts, and a shirt which leaves nothing to the imagination. Combined with the sparse number of entries in the paper logbook, I have my suspicions about what the hotel's actual business is.