Mountain hiking

We went hiking last weekend, but I haven't had time to get the photos up until now. AT this moment I am waiting for the household goods to arrive (they are late!!) and annoyed, so I decided to get these up to take my mind off it!

Bukhansan National Park is mountain range north of Seoul (Buk means north,Han means river, San means mountain). One of the mountains in the park is Tobongsan, where Mark and I used to go and hike on weekends. Now, hiking in Korea is not like hiking in say, Washington. There are hordes of people, for one thing. Also open air restaurants and snack stands all the way up, and tiny jewel like temples tucked into the gullies. Korean take hiking very seriously, and dress in hiking clothes and carry hiking poles and whatnot.

I finally got to buy an item I have long coveted- a scarf map of the park!! It has all the trails, temples and mountains on it. Sooo cool, I always wanted one.

The area has grown up since I was last there- far more building line the entrance street, a school that was in the boundaries of the park gone, far more people. But many things are the same- the beautiful temple complex at the bottom, the snacks sold (dried squid, Gryphon's favorite), the quiet(ish) streams, beautiful rocks and amazing views.

I am sure there will be many, many more mountain photos to come. We took the wrong path, and instead of sort of strolling up (what I remember) to the awesome rock outcropping and temple at the top, we found ourselves scrambling up rocks. I am not a fan of heights, so I was not so happy. Of course 78 year old women kept passing us, so it couldn't have been *too* hairy a climb, but then again, old women in Korea are awfully tough! SO we didn't get to the top on that path. Another day we'll go and get there.

If you click on the Flickr link for the slideshow and watch it on Flickr, you can hit "show info" and then the captions of the photos will appear. Or you can just look at the photos on the blog.