And then…
Almost immediately after doing the leg that made me begin
this journey, I hit a leg that was so annoying, I might have given it up had it
not been that I had come so far.
Back in June, when I decided to take the hiatus for the
summer, I opened to the website for the trail to check how far there was still
to go. There was a pop-up box that
advised that one of the legs had been closed for a couple of years. No reason was given. I had noted it at the time. It was beyond where I had stopped and I
remember thinking that it was a shame that I hadn’t gone a little faster for it
was only a few legs farther on. I would
have to skip it, I thought at the time.
Fast forward to September and I had mostly forgotten that
leg. I opened the website and that
pop-up was gone. There was nothing on
the website to indicate that any legs were closed. When I came down from the mountain that was
the previous leg, leg 36, the sign for leg 37 was clear. Was that the leg, I wondered to myself. It couldn’t be. The sign said nothing indicating the leg was
closed. The website said nothing. No problem…
Wrong.
Everything started out fine.
From Anin Beach, the trail led along the train tracks for a short
distance.
Then it went into a fairly barren area, with just a bare
road. There was a motel resort with a golf
course attached, but overall, this was just an area devoid of development at
the mouth of a river. It wound up along
what really looked like a small delta area, and back into some civilization.
It went up onto a ridge along a hill that more like a berm
by a river, which I guess it kind of was.
The trail didn’t seem to be overly traveled. It didn’t concern me too much as I had really
seen very few people ever traveling along the trail. But this was more overgrown than much of the
trail to date. But I didn’t think much
of it.
There was an interesting sight along the way. As the trail went from the river delta area into the hills, I crossed a set of train tracks. I always find the imagery of the rails going off into the distance to be very evocative. These were no different.
And then I came into a newer small development and found a sign that
was pointed in exactly the wrong direction.
That sign to the left should be pointing along the road to the
right. It was pointing to the left. And the next sign that would have helped was
hidden behind the bushes on the pole near the car to the right. It was completely invisible, and it ended up
with me heading blithely down the wrong road because the sign so clearly
pointed in that direction. Had I not
been so tired (after the mountain) I might have noticed it was also not
pointing in the direction from which I had come, and I might have worked out
that the direction I thought I had to go was not correct. It wouldn’t have taken me almost 2 kilometres
in the wrong direction (and then almost 2 back again…) before I finally worked out
that I was in the wrong place. And I
might not have been so very cross by the time I returned to this sign, poked
around in the bushes and found the sign going in the correct direction. But I was not done with the snafus on this
one… not by a long shot.
Back going in the right direction, I came to a little park
by a reservoir. I stopped for a little
break and then headed up the road, past this sign. You might notice the little blue arrows on
the pole. They point into a tree. It didn’t matter because I missed it the
first time I went by because of how the homeowner across the road had tied his
rather vicious sounding dogs to a pole right there. I wasn’t going anywhere near them. And the last sign I had seen pointed up the
road. So I followed it to… well… nowhere
really. It just ended. Now I was getting pissed off. I came back and found this sign and how it
showed that I should go past the vicious dogs onto the embankment holding back
the reservoir. It took about 15 minutes
(after the kilometre or so wasted going up the dead end road…) to find this
arrow.
I worked my way around the reservoir via the road, which
really was just as good, and far more obvious than trying to skirt the
reservoir embankment.
Again back on the trail, I once again noticed how overgrown
the trail seemed. But I was too far
along by this point to really think of going back. And that was a folly. For before long, I came across this. A fairly new-looking solar farm had been
installed on the hillside. It cut right
across the trail. And there were
absolutely no signs showing which direction to go. Was the trail on the other side of the solar
farm? I didn’t know. There were no signs. Should I go above it? Who knew?
Should I go below it? Not a
clue. The trail was obliterated by the
farm. I eventually chose a direction and
worked my way laboriously past the solar farm by going below it. There was no path. I eventually picked the trail back up on the
other side, after some kind of minor grid search trying to find it. I was so annoyed by this point. But at least this was the reason the trail
had been advertised as being closed.
Right? Despite nothing on the leg
sign saying the leg was closed, despite the pop-up on the website being taken
down, I had found the reason for it in the first place, and I had successfully
negotiated the obstacle and I was free and clear. I really wish I wouldn’t challenge the hiking
gods like that, for they proved to me not to think like that.
Shortly after passing the solar farm and continuing on the
trail and breathing a sigh of relief… I
reached the construction area for the new road, or possibly a railroad,
slashing across the trail, and proving to me that I had no clue what was going
on. After a rather dramatic raising of
my fists to curse the skies, I slowly made my way through the construction area
to pick up the last couple of kilometres of the trail.
And that really should have been that. It had been such a difficult leg, and quite
long as well, that I should have been able to finish and feel good about
conquering all those obstacles. But I
made one final mistake. I finished the
leg. After the construction area, I
passed across a major road to follow the trail to the end point about 2
kilometres away. There was a bus stop on
the major road, and I thought that maybe, just maybe I really ought to stop and
catch a bus and make that the end of the leg for the day. I was frustrated and fuming over the way the
leg had gone and how the caretakers hadn’t properly noted that it really
shouldn’t be used at that time. And I
really wanted to finish the leg to get it done.
So I passed the bus stop and continued on.
I passed these really old flag poles and got to the end
point… and found there was no bus stop.
Google maps showed a bus stop some distance away, but with no service on
that day at that time. And that pretty
much made the day complete. I ended up
walking back into town, some 5 kilometres distant, crossing the next leg of the
trail along the way, which only added insult to injury. And I was so annoyed that I just hopped a bus
towards Seoul and gave it up for that trip.
It was probably not the ideal way to finish a visit to the trail, but I
was just really quite disheartened.
Sigh!!
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