Along with the remains of the Xiaoyudong Bridge, the Hanwang Earthquake Ruins were one of my original earthquake related sites of interest to go visit. At the time when I was making my plans, Beichuan and Wenchuan both required too much leaving the great flat plains around Chengdu to go up into the mountains. Jokes on me though cause it turns out that even though plains are much easier to navigate, their also boring. Plain as it were.

I left Xiushui heading towards Hanwang by way of some truly lovely but otherwise generally unremarkable farm and county roads. I wasn't running the GPS but the roads were small enough that I was checking the phone maps fairly frequently.

Suishui, the first town I passed through, had even less in the way of appetizing looking breakfast options that what I'd seen in Xiushui. By the time I hit Gongxing, however, the lunch places were starting to think about opening and I got myself a nice bowl of mutton and thin rice noodles which I ate along with the crunchy peanuty fried "Xiushui Intangible Cultural Heritage" bag of snacks that had been pushed upon me by the owners as I left the hotel this morning.

Per the GPS instructions, I aimed for the smaller of the two bridges across the Mianyuan only to find that it was actually a ford across a dam, that it had washed out to the point of being uncrossable even if the water wasn't high, and that I could still cross using a temporary large dirt berm which was in place to aid with reconstruction. Unfortunately, once I got across, the road wasn't.

At this point, I should have just turned around and gone back across the Mianyuan and taken the main bridge. Instead, I followed a small dirt trail along the top of the levee certain that the existence of said trail meant that it had to eventually merge with something. By the time I'd gone the better part of a kilometer, come to the realization that I should have turned around earlier, and actually gotten to the point of turning around rather than soldiering onward, I'd had lots of opportunities to look at some of the earthquake ruins and was completely covered in various thistles and nettles.

At this point I wasn't actually completely covered in thistles and nettles. I merely thought I was completely covered in thistles and nettles. Once I turned around and went back the way I came, however, I realized what "completely covered" in thistles and nettles actually meant. My tights looked like they had grown a layer of fur and, despite vigorous washing in a washing machine, I would still be picking random pieces of plantlife out of my clothing four days later.

Across the main bridge into Hanwang, I went up to the Earthquake Memorial Park but they wouldn't let visitors in on foot or on 'unapproved' bicycles. I didn't have a problem with paying the rental cost of an 'approved' bike. Maintaining a half collapsed city to the point where it's safe for visitors can't be cheap and there didn't appear to be any other kind of entry fee beyond the bike rental or e-buggy ticket. It's just that the bikes for rent were horrible single speed tandems and trandems and pedal cars and not only did I not especially fancy leaving my gear somewhere, I really didn't want to ride one of those.

Between what I saw from the levee path and what I saw before I got to the gated off section of the Hanwang Ruins, Hanwang is even creepier than Beichuan because, in Hanwang, if you squint, it almost looks normal.

Leaving Hanwang, I started by heading south towards Mianzhu City but that road was wide and straight and fast and dull and it wasn't long before I'd searched places to stay for the night and picked a rough route to elsewhere via the smaller roads.

At some point after I turned the GPS on and decided to let it do the work of figuring out where I was supposed to go and when I was supposed to turn, I found myself on the Yanshan Rd. (literally means "road that runs along the mountains" and was a mostly flat road on the knife edge between the end of the plains and the beginning of the mountains). Clearly a scenic tourist route once I was on it, I'd actually seen signs telling you which way to Yanshan Rd. back when I was leaving Hanwang. I just didn't know that that was they meant.

In Zundao Town, I decided that my chances of making it to lodging before sunset weren't so good if I headed up into the mountains for a bit so I stuck with the Yanshan Road nearly the whole way to Guangji and the bridge across the Jinhe River. At some point, because I was following the GPS's instructions, it decided I'd save two or three hundred meters over the course of the afternoon if I switched to little farm roads and since they were just as scenic in a different kind of way, I decided I agreed.

With the various backtracking caused by the GPS not telling me to turn until after it was already recalculating my route, I'm fairly sure I went the exact same distance or even longer.

Guangji Town and Luoshui Town are on opposite sides of the Jinhe River. They're really basically one town instead of two but because of historical development reasons as well as still being under the administration of two different counties, they remain two different towns. In addition to a lot more hotels than Guangji, Luoshui was also showing two massage places so there was really no doubt in my mind that I was going to spend the night in Luoshui.

The first massage place didn't appear to exist. I found the second one minutes later and immediately went looking for the closest hotel so I could change out of my prickly nettly clothing and come back.

This hotel would be the third time so far in Sichuan that I've registered on the computer. The second time was last night. The first time was Jiangyou City. Registering on the computer provides all the information that is necessary for an old style paper registration. But, despite my registration on the computer, the police still wanted to see my passport with their own two eyes and get those photocopies. Which, other than the fact that it also happened last night and also happened one time in Shanxi, has never happened to me in the ten plus years since computer registration became a thing.