After passing a few (literally) power stations we passed an iron and steel works.

The smoke is from charging coke ovens.

Too far away to see if they were being charged by hand or car. Cars with fume reduction have been available for many years.

The apparent lack of a coal bunker above the coke ovens suggests hand charging. Sooner them than me as the saying goes.

Unfortunately the road had other plans for us.

2.2m is lower than the container we shipped Tardis in.

The two blast furnaces were clearly visible to us.

We have been on the Loess Plateau for some days now.

The landscape has become distinctly Loess.

Its another landscape I haven't seen previously.

The map gives the extent of the Loess Plateau in China.

The sediment came from the Gobi Desert. Most of it between 1.5 and 3 million years ago. Some of it as long ago as 22 million years.

In places the loess is 300m thick.

Not so for those driving up the hill from the coal mine.

Deep ruts. And of course the inconsiderate coal trucks are a different width to cars which thus tend to drive on the wrong side of the road.

I was a bit naive and thought it was just the trucks that were overloaded. But now I know the roads are overloaded also.

About 16 million tonnes of loess is lost down the Yellow River every year through erosion.

Efforts have been made since the mid 90's to revegetate the terraces. 

These are fairly old. There are more modern looking ones with a more substantial front.

The chicane was designed to keep long wide trucks off the road.

We drove through fairly easily.

Strangely no agriculture.

Either that or the Yellow River is Orange.

Or the colour has been mistranslated.

This is just a small stream away from the main Hukou falls.

The ticket only allows for one entry. We figured that since the sunset was good the sunrise would be even better.

They had a convertible solar powered three wheeled winged truck.

Actually the solar panel was attached to a street light.

The lights were all around the car park, even though it was closed at night.

For no apparent reason at about 7pm the previously silent loudspeakers burst into life.

The programme began with some current popular music, followed by a safety announcement for those in the car park (us and the construction team). All at 100dB (very loud).

For a while we wondered if the Chinese had found the answer to unwanted free campers. I had a pair of wire cutters ready.

Fortunately it stopped as suddenly as it had started, mid sentence. 

Upstream the Yellow River looks like a normal braided river in a wide river valley.

Downstream there is a60m deep 5km long gorge cut deeper into the valley floor. 

Loess really is fine.

And that little stream we photographed the night before.

A slight diversion from the itinerary. We have a few spare days and also feel we have been traveling a bit fast.

We've been feeling a bit tired and I came down with a cold - just a runny nose that turned into a cough.

Independent travel can be tiring at the best of times. Best to rest.

This is the sight of sand miners (no, not another Star Wars reference) from the bridge downstream of the falls.

The small barges have a pipe to shore. Pump out of the river onto the piles of sand and the sediment builds up.

It looked like it all lined up but one can never tell ....

The sides of the roads have deep, vertical, culverts for which I've developed a healthy respect.

Not sure how he managed to get all the wheels off though.

And it isn't in our copy of Lonely Planet.

After a few km of hairpin bends, narrow road, and descending buses we passed the ticket office and headed along the side of the mountain.

There was a sign to guide us.

Driving a reasonably high right hand drive vehicle on the right side of the road meant I had a more than occasional view of a vertical drop.

I don't enjoy heights and this road made me somewhat uncomfortable.

No, the road is on top.

Its also been widened at some time so I wasn't sure what was underneath us and what load it was designed to support.

Mostly cars.

It looked like a couple of thousand feet straight down on the right.

To be honest though. Shortly after this we met a large bus coming the other way. We relaxed a bit.

There's a large car park and hotel at the end. We stopped for the night.

On the 29th we have spent all day inside the Tardis. Water tanks are full after all day rain. Internet says sunshine tomorrow.

Hopefully.

I know I said we needed a rest .... but!