The forecast came through!!!
Sunday dawned clear and looking to be very nice indeed. I began the day by getting up very early,
around six. I thought it might be nice
to go to the sunrise park and watch the sun rise. Unfortunately, the weather was too nice. The sky was too clear and the sunrise was
going to be nothing particularly spectacular.
So I just headed to the bus stop and got a bus into the national
park. And it was then that I remembered the
problem with going to famous places in Korea to sea famous events, like the
fall foliage, in the places that are famous for them, like Seoraksan National
Park. Korea is small, but has a fair
number of people. And those people are
proud of their famous events happening in places that are famous for them. So lots of them go to those places during
those famous events. And they are not
the most orderly, or cognizant (a cynic might even say caring of) of what are
people are doing around the, like taking a photo of a tree in full fall
colours, or of a mountain under a brilliant blue early morning sky, or even
(unfortunately) walking in a straight line.
There were people everywhere, and it was only 7 in the
morning. It was only going to get
worse. I wasn’t going to be staying all
that long, lest I commit oblivious hiker-i-cide or oblivious step into someone
else’s photo walker-i-cide.
In an effort to get away from the crowds somewhat, I did a
short hike up to a waterfall. I had done
the hike a number of years before, but it was still nice, and there were still
some trees that had some colourful leaves.
The waterfall was as I remembered, and I even managed to get
a photo with nobody standing in front of it.
Patience does usually pay off.
But there was a new piece of the hike, that headed up the
side of the mountain. I wasn’t sure I
wanted to take much more time. I did
still want to do another leg of the trail before heading back. I asked someone if it was worth it to go up
and see the second waterfall. “Oh, yes!”
I was told. It was certainly worth it.
I think that person must have been very easily impressed because
the view of the waterfall was not really worth it. It might have been in a couple of hours, but
when I got up there the waterfall was still in the shadow of the surrounding
mountains. But the rest of the view was
fairly nice. Not sure if the hike almost
straight up three or four hundred steps was worth the effort though. Oh, sure it was…
Then it was down to the general area again. I stopped to see the big statue of Buddha in
the valley for a few minutes. But by
this time it was well past nine o’clock and there were ever more people just
being in the way. I was getting
frustrated and figured it was time to head out and on my way. So I leap-frogged my way on a couple of buses
to get back to the seaside sunrise park and continue on the trail.
Very quickly after the park, it was into Sokcho proper, only
a few kilometres from the entrance to Seoraksan National Park. Sokcho is a nice gateway town/city to the national
park, but in the end it is just a little city with a nice bunch of mountains to
frame it in the view to the west. The
trail went through the port area, over a bridge or two, and then got to the
north edge of town.
There was a lookout point looking down on the water and back
to the city. Then around a bend, the
city fell away again.
Before it went into the last bit of the leg, I passed a
hospital and funeral parlour. I was amused
by the big sign outside, pointing in to the parking lot of the funeral
parlour. The sign proudly proclaimed
that you could buy cigarettes at the convenience store there. And of course, the funeral parlour was right
there. Fitting.
The final stretch of the leg was around a little inlet that
looked more like a lake. Around the lake
there were a whole bunch of cabins for rent.
It was peaceful and beautiful, with lots of birdlife on display. And it felt far away from the city despite
the city being only just over the hill.
I wondered how much it would cost to spend a night in one of those
cabins. It might be a good place to go
for a holiday, if the price was right. I
took some time walking around the lake, stopping to sit and just enjoy the
brilliant day.
But the day was wasting and I did still have to get all the
way back to Seosan. So I hurried to the
end point in the harbour just outside the lake/recreation area. Then I caught a bus for the short ride to the
bus terminal and a bus back to Seoul. It
had been a long time since I had had such an easy to reach way back to Seoul
after hiking on one of these trail hiking weekends. It was high time that I did, too. It didn’t all have to be difficult…
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