Hike with Docent Joe

One of the great things about where we live is our vicinity to Elephant Mountain. It takes us about five minutes by foot to get to the base. When we first moved here, we noticed that there were always a ton of people walking towards the mountain on the weekends. And when we checked TripAdvisor, we saw that it's the NUMBER ONE rated thing to do here in Taipei! The whole path has steps on it, which is good and bad: some days it feels like a painful session of Stairmaster, and on others it's pretty brainless, you just keep counting. There are multiple paths that could get quite confusing, but it starts out with just two: the one on the right is more steep, but has more photo opportunities with Taipei 101, and the one on the left is less sleep, but makes you feel like you're in the middle of the jungle. The girls are often too busy to go make the trek during the week, and the weekends can get pretty busy with all the tourists, but we did find a recent weekend to go. Go early and there aren't too many crowds.

Joe has always loved nature, and many of the plants and animals he sees on the trail make him nostalgic for his childhood days growing up in Taiwan. He can give a pretty good science lesson the whole way up. We stopped to check out parasitic plants, banyan trees, spiders, and lichen...

Live science lessons. Look at Zoe's face in the bottom right...I think it was something slimy.

Taking a break at the top.

Note the swirly plants: one on the left looks like an alien, and one on the top right like an asparagus!

Banyan and lots of leaves.

At the top there's also a place where you can do some dips and pull-ups. that's what Phoebe is trying to do.

Obligatory selfie!