Leg 7: Taehwa River Observatory to Yeompo Intersection

 

After starting out from the motel where I stayed, I was unable to find anything that was open as it was the holiday. I was also in a rather lean area of town as far as businesses. By the time I got to the observatory, I was famished. There was a cafe there and I went up to get something to eat. I also had a great view.

I was feeling odd, however. Woozy. Lightheaded. A bit sick to my stomach. I thought maybe I had done myself ill by not getting any breakfast and hiking for five or six hours. But as I was reading a little bit while waiting for my snack, I looked up... and realized the scenery had changed. It was a revolving restaurant. No wonder I was woozy and feeling ill. The mechanism on the turning floor was not really very smooth and it provided just enough incentive to feel motion sickness.

After my lunch snack, I headed out for the next leg of the trail, leg 7. It followed the river inland for a little bit, then crossed to the other side and headed down towards the harbour. It must be a great area to go for a walk in the spring and summer once the greenery is full and lush.

 

Across from the observation tower there was a long strip of bamboo forest. That was very surreal, mostly because of the ABBA they were pumping through the forest... I don't think Dancing Queen was really meant to blow softly through a bamboo forest in South Korea... :)

There were lots of exercise areas along the river. This one had all kinds of bases covered... soccer, basketball, and tennis.

These confused me for a bit. The only thing I could come up with for why the trees are raised like that is that the river must flood at times and the raised plots are maybe to keep the trees from suffering from such a flood.

As the day waned and I was approaching the end of the hike, the really nice parts of the hike passed behind me. I entered into the industrial area, even though it was mostly across the river. And there was a huge Hyundai plant there, cars stretching out for kilometres.

The sun was setting behind all the industrial/chemical plants, and it was a very nice and colourful sunset... until I really thought about the reasons it was such a nice colour. That would be all the crap being emitted by the smokestacks. That was a sobering thought.

I reached the end point of the leg, but I couldn't find the map sign. I ended up just making up my own end point and calling it a day. Then I headed into the downtown area to find a place to stay, hoping the next day wouldn't have me facing too much of the industrial ugliness of the Ulsan harbour area.