Hi all,
As promised, I'm back with a second post this evening about my camping trip to Songnisan National Park in Chungcheongbuk-do, about 2 1/2 hours southeast of Seoul. The weather finally started to warm up a little bit last week, enough that a few of us decided to go and hit up some early season camping. You could definitely tell it was the beginning of the camping season once we arrived at the park; there were only a few tents set up and not many more were put up as the day went on. Anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself. Much thanks to Sara and Rebecca, who did most of the planning for the trip. We all met up Saturday early morning (9:30, but it's the weekend, definitely a few hours earlier than the usual awakening hour) at the bus terminal in Seoul. On our way there from Suwon we passed a Land O'Lakes delivery truck on the highway headed towards Seoul, but unfortunately, I was waking up from a little nap and wasn't quick enough with my camera to get a picture. Note to Dad: you'll have to make sure Randy lets whoever's in charge of distribution out here that they are getting noticed, even if it's just me. Back to the camping trip, the bus ride took a little over 2 1/2 hours and I used the time to get more rest in before we officially started our day. Once we reached Songnisan (pronounced Son-ri-san) we made our way to the pretty vacant campsite and set up shop. We had 2 tents for the 6 of us, so there was a decent amount of room to sleep. We had plenty of food to get us through the rest of the day and the next morning. After we declared ourselves sufficiently set up, we set out towards the Buddhist temple at the foot of the hiking trails, which is where the huge golden Buddha below is located.
The temple grounds were pretty cool, similar to other Buddhist temples that I've been to in Korea. After exploring in and around the temple we made our way back to camp where we tried to start a campfire. Unfortunately, most of the wood around the campgrounds was very wet still and was useless. We also had a hard time finding logs to build our fire around. So, we made do with kindling and pine needles until we found some halfway decent wood, which we eventually did find. We also bought some split logs later in the evening to make sure our fire kept going strong until we were ready to call it quits for the night. While the weather was pretty nice during the day (it got up to roughly 14-15 degrees Celsius or mid-50s F), the temperature dropped pretty quickly at night. Even though we were all bundled up in the tents, in our sleeping bags, sweatshirts and sweatpants, I was still pretty cold. I'm guessing it got close to freezing overnight and most of us woke up the next morning shivering. But, once we got the fire started again, it was fine. We had a great tripper breakfast of eggs and veggies, matzah (for some), toast (for others), tea and coffee. After breakfast we decided that most of us were ready to head back to Seoul, so we did just that. I had a really great time camping, even if the weather was still a little cooler than I'd like it to be. As most of you know, I generally enjoy being outdoors and my years at camp have made me appreciate the canoe trips and camping experiences that are a part of every summer. It was nice to get away from the city for a weekend and I'm hoping that as the weather continues to get nicer, we can get more camping trips in on the weekends.
As I said in the last post, the weather this week has been pretty nice in the afternoons. Not very warm compared to home, but warm enough for some tennis after school. In other exciting news, I finally got a new pair of shoes. I've been searching here for a few months now, but the highest size most shoe stores here carry is US size 12, so I just miss the cut off. I resorted to ordering a new pair online from Simple Shoes and they came in 2-3 business days, which was awesome, even if shipping cost as much as the shoes themselves. Not sure what's on tap for this coming weekend, the plans are still in the works. That's all from this end, hope all is well with everyone reading.
What I'm listening to: "Brackett, WI" by Bon Iver
Enjoy the pics:
No comments:
Post a Comment