I took a course called “ sustainable living” this semester. The professor asked each group to introduce a place where there were various plants. Our group chose to go to Alishan National Forest Recreation Area on October 16th. At first, we wanted to get to Alishan by train from Chai-Yi train station; however, one of my group members said that the railway had been under repair recently. Therefore, we decided to take the bus in the end and two of us bought the tickets two days before in case the tickets were sold out.
On that day, we agreed to meet up at 9 o’clock at Chia-Yi train station. I woke up early at 7 o’clock to have breakfast with my friend. We wanted to try the famous beef entrails soup in a traditional market in Chia-Yi city. Unfortunately, it rained heavily when I woke up. We still decided to follow our original plan since we had to go out eventually. The soup was tasty, but we waited in line for a long time so that we were almost late. We arrived at the bus stop on time, but it turned out that someone was late. She could not catch the bus that we planned to take. Since we were the ones who held the tickets, we put the tickets at the bus stop for her to change the tickets to the next bus.
On our way to Alishan, the road was twisty, and it took us approximately two hours to get there. Since I did not want to become carsick, I fell asleep. We arrived at Alishan National Forest Recreation Area at 11 o’clock. We had to wait for our belated group members, so we decided to have a lunch. Much to our surprise, there was only one convenience store there. We originally thought that there would be some stands selling food. However, we could only eat microwave meals.
After our belated group member’s arrival, we were ready to enter the Alishan National Forest Recreation Area. It cost each of us 100 dollars to pay for the entrance fee. The first thing we found was that the food stands were inside the Forest Recreation Area, but we had just finished our lunch. We started to walk and take photos of the plants. We found out that the trail was too long and we were a bit lazy. Thus, we decided to take a train to a place inside and walk out on foot. Although the train moved slowly, the scenery was beautiful and there were even monkeys beside the railway. Getting off the train, we went to visit the Second- generation Sacred Tree called Alishan Xianglin Sacred Tree. The tree was very tall since it had been there for about two thousand years. After visiting the tree, we went back to the entrance and returned home.
After walking all day, I was exhausted and my legs were aching. All I wanted to do after reaching home was lie on my bed and sleep. Although it was a very delightful day, I thought I would not spend four hours going to Alishan National Forest Recreation Area again since it was really a waste of time and I was not a person who liked to hike in a forest recreation area.