Getting the cars together at a local Beijing toll station.
This was my ride for the day, and made me miss driving terribly. New goal: Get a Beijing driver's license.
Unfortunately, our choice of highways for the ride down stopped being very highway-y after about 50km. D'oh!
But we got to see a bunch of rural Hebei province
And made a rest stop at a gas station.
白洋淀 is a huge tourist place, it seems, and the parking lot was packed.
Across the road was another parking lot with some 30+ tourist buses sitting.
We were 6 in total, with friends, their parents, and a really tall australian guy.
You can walk to the park (800m or so) or take an electric cart. Since we had a few seniors with us, the group opted for rides whenever possible.
I actually didn't know what this places was, so I just watched as we drove around.
Ooh, it's a giant cornfield?
Finally, we got to the lake, and the awesome service centre and picked up some tickets to go exploring.
This takes half an hour of arguing with the lady at the counter, so I just went wandering a bit.
There are lots of booths selling: Duck eggs, goose eggs, nuts, herbal teas, wicker hats, and bamboo snake toys. All sell the exact same thing.
Ooops, gotta go catch a boat.
Eggs. The white ones are goose eggs, the blue ones are duck eggs (treated in some sort of sauce).
Eggs and wicker baskets. The brown ones are also duck eggs, treated in a "5 spices sauce". All are "cooked" and can be stored for a very long time before eating.
Nuts and grains and herbal teas.
The crazy ticket centre.
This screen very warmly welcomed you and told you all about the place, and periodically "HARDWARE ERROR!" would scroll across the bottom.
Practice your Chinese?
Get in some good Chinglish?
And there's the lake!
And the tour bus crowds!
Wen and Graham.
More tour groups.
You can choose between hand-rowed boats (you get a guy who rows two giant oars) or motor boats. The former will take about 6 hours to see the place, the latter well under 4, if not less.
We originally opted for hand-driven, but then changed our minds and upgraded to motorboat tickets.
Getting under way in the boat.
Wen
Feng
Graham
There are craploads of boats out there today, and the water is extremely choppy for it.
Some of them are quite huge, and since we were the ONLY two foreigners there the entire day, we were quite the big hit with the locals.
If your hand-driven boat is pertickerly full, they'll give you a second oar guy.
There is tonnes of freshwater fish and crab farming here in China. This is place speicalises mostly in the latter.
First stop, the gigantic restaurant area.
You can tell buy the frothing fountain thing in the middle of this pond that it's also a fishery.
Since this is pretty much the only restaurant in the whole area, the crowds are large, and they don't have to try very hard with the food quality.
Lots of private dining rooms if you're so inclined.
And awesome duck boats!
Bee!
For some silly reason, we chose outdoor dining. It was a sauna!
And here's a surprisingly good panorama of the little fish pond area.
It looks all peaceful and nice. That's because there's no wind at all. On a muggy day, that's bad.
Ducks!
So, here's where the lotus started coming in. These are lotus leaves. You eat them.
These are other captives guests eating lunch.
Next, lotus seeds, 莲子. Lotus-y
Lotus root.
And, for the benefit of the foreigners, sweet and sour fish. Funny. Apparently, we only eat this and chicken flied lice.
Cool wood carving thing.
Here's where things got interesting: Our boat driver, whom we rented for the entire day, took off to pick up and carry around other passengers.
So, we had to wait around for a good 30 minutes for him to return.
The locals were pissed.
So, I wandered around a bit more.
Nobody is allowed to go into these cool buildings. Maybe employee housing (probably not: quality is too good).
Look carefully and see the giant fish.
So, after getting out boat back and giving the driver a massive yelling at, we went to the huge lotus garden park area.
This is really the main attraction, so the crowds here were teh biggest of the day.
If you're really swanky, you get the cool imperial-style boat.
Lotus welcoming centre.
Practice your Chinese if you are so inclined.
The Chinese are pretty casual about appearances. Shirtless guys are extremely normal.
Lotuses!
I started taking every opportunity to take pictures of people posing hard for pictures. I'm retarded.
Oooh, an interesing [sic] bridge.
This is a giant lake area within the giant lake area filled with tonnes of lotuses that is itself filled with tonnes of lotuses. Unreal.
You can get squirt guns if necessary.
They decided to get another boat to go see the lotus gardens, and save half an hour of muggy walking, for the elders' sakes.
Ice cream was a huge hit today.
Wen's parents are extremely nice and friendly people, and speak pretty clear Chinese (although mom has a bit of an accent).
This was our rower guy. He can pretty much eat whatever he wants and never has trouble getting to sleep at night.
That's the interesing [sic] bridge.
This is lotus city.
The Chinese are not so concerned with leaving things in a pristine condition, so the question is always "can i pick one?"
Business trips come here too.
Another bridge full o' peoples.
Hey, there's an ultralight up there too!
And here we are at the main lotus garden.
There are apparently 366 different kinds of lotus flower, and this park claims to have most (all?) of them. Not all are in bloom right now, but there are at least 150+ visible right now.
They all have the very characteristic core in the middle
Hordes of folks here. Again, only two foreigners.
You can try to learn all their names too, if you so wish.
This (not so) little girl: "妈妈，那个老外偷拍我的照片啦！" (That foreign guy stole a picture of me!)
Strike a pose. Very important.
wandering around the gardens some 
Who IS that sexy man? 帅哥！！！
This is the Sino-Japanese friendship Lotus
Uummm ... that doesn't bode well.
Take a photo in front of the fake waterfall rock thing time!
Those are the thickest legs I have ever seen on a three year old.
This part of the garden was deserted.
This is the boat ride back to the main terminal 
You can pick these lotus pistols and pick out the seeds from the inside.
Huge tour bus group arriving. Eeeks!
Duckie!
To get to the exit, you have to run a guantlet of vendors selling ....
you guessed it: goose eggs, duck eggs, and nuts and herbal teas.
Getting back in our launch to go tour around some more.
The locals are still learning a bit about not littering. It'll take a generation or two.
This bird was having a hard time keeping his lunch in his beak. I bet it was 90% due to the huge scary loud things that kept following it all day.
Since our driver had screwed up earlier and was worried we would file a complaint, he was exceedingly nice to us the rest of the day, and took us down a few cool semi-forbidden allies, etc.
We had a wild duck for lunch too. This is where they grow 'em.
After a day out baking under the sun, people were starting to fade as the afternoon went on.
But lots of people were still heading out.
This is cool. This guy has a bunch of cormorans on his boat tied to strings. They catch fish for him, and have little rings on their throats so they can't swallow them and have to give them to him.
Heading back to the main land after finishing up our visit. 
back on dry land!
More looking at eggs and nuts and herbal teas.
And the cart ride back to the parking lot. 
More Chinese gas station excitement! And then back home (using the faster, more better-er highway).