Yesterday, when I was actively engaged in not getting out of bed, I told myself that I could go "just as far as Yanchi and stop there". Turns out, even if I'd wanted to go farther, since I'm not carrying a tent and wouldn't camp in this weather unless the tent was a fully furnished yurt, I was still going to go "just as far as Yanchi".

Despite being a National Road, the road to Yanchi was decided upon because it runs parallel to the Great Wall for more than 20 kilometers. Little did I know, when I made this plan, how unattractively boring the Great Wall is in places where the local available construction materials did not include rocks.

Since this road also runs parallel to an expressway, the traffic levels were pretty alright. In fact, the only time I had any kind of fright was near a weigh station as one truck slowed down to go over a speed bump and the truck behind it nearly rear-ended the first truck.

It was about as interesting as you'd expect from one of the National Roads. The salt lakes that give Yanchi it's name and the scrubby not-quite desert scenery were actually quite pretty. And even if the Great Wall in this area was only "great" in it's length, it was still kind of inspiring to ride alongside a wall that lasted for twenty kilometers.

Stopped in at the Yanchi Xidesheng (which also had high end motorcycles for some reason), got my shifting tweaked, got road instructions, and went riding round and round and round in Yanchi looking to see if there was anything interesting or unique in the city cause it seemed that any city which was spending that much money on rebuilding their historic city walls (complete with glass panels to let you see inside at the original walls) had to have something interesting but, well, it didn't.

Then I went to find my first hotel in Ningxia. And that's when things got...interesting.