Jeollabuk-do Trip - Day 3: Byeonsan Bando

The third day of our term break trip, March 3, we went to the Yellow Sea on Korea's western coast. We had read about a national park called Byeonsan Bando National Park and we thought it would be easy to find once we got off the bus, but we arrived in a little, not-much-happening village. We wandered down one street before heading back to the bus station to try to ask someone where it was. The lady selling bus tickets didn't say a word to our questionings and just pointing us to a group of young people in their late teens/early twenties sitting at a table in the corner. I asked them to point us in the direction of the national park and they giggled a lot and talked amongst themselves before finally delegating someone to talk to us in English. The guy managed to say that we were in the park. We weren't convinced he knew what he was talking about, but he was able to give us very basic directions to the beach, so we set out again and this time kept going and made it to Gyeokpo Beach (just one of the many beaches and sights in the expansive park) without too much difficulty.

We spent most of the rest of the day walking along the beach and into small cave-ish areas, trying to skip rocks when the water wasn't too wavy, finding sea glass and seashells, and just in general doing all that seashore kind of stuff. We really enjoyed the wonderfully relaxing day! But by around 4 p.m. we were ready to head back and managed to just get to the bus station minutes before the next bus was leaving back for Jeonju. If we'd missed that bus we would have been waiting another two hours. For our next trip we've decided to always take a picture of the bus schedule board before heading out of the bus station for the day, even if it's only in Korean.

The next day we walked around Jeonju a little bit, but pretty soon we were ready to head back to Seoul so we got an express bus back to a station in Seoul about half an hour away from our institute by subway and were back at our apartment around 4 p.m. We had a great trip and really enjoyed spending so much time out in nature.
- Ali

We had seen these types of mounds in the previous days of our trip and finally decided they must be Korean graves

Sometimes they were a little more fancy with plaques or statues

Just getting to Gyeokpo Beach!

Jonathan at the Yellow Sea

Als and the ocean

Layered rock

Barnacles

Like the pages of a book

Posing in front of the Gyeokpo Chaseokgang Cliffs

Splash

We tried to reach this jetty by walking below the cliffs, but eventually we discovered that the tide was too high
to make it there without getting completely wet, so we turned around and headed back the way we'd come

Jonathan and some of the terrain we traversed trying to get to the jetty

We found all sorts of rock stacks in a cave

Hole right through the rock

Looking where we'll head next

Path

We hung out in this small, quiet bay for a while

Enjoying the view

and skipping rocks

We also constructed an inuksuk

and I (Jonathan) found a bunch of different colored rocks

This whole region has tons of rock layers

Looking back at the rocky cove

Ali documenting carnage

What a good-looking girl :)

Really hazy

The jetty we'd tried to get to before (we had walked along the shore below the cliffs on the left-hand side of the picture)

Interesting swirls in the rock

We found a chalkboard to write on with rocks :)

Salad

I found these tiny shells embedded in the rock all over this one area

Where we spent the day (click to view larger)

For pictures and commentary about our other day trips in Jeollabuk-do, click the links below.
Day 1: Muju
Day 2: Daedunsan

Jeollabuk-do Trip - Day 2: Daedunsan

March 2, the second day of our trip, we left Jeonju at 9 a.m. and headed to Daedunsan Provincial Park. Our guidebook told us there was a cable car up part of Daedun mountain, which we really wanted to check out. Since I'd gotten quite cold the evening before, we made sure to wear warm clothes and we were sure glad we had by the end of the day. After an hour and a half of beautiful mountainous scenery, the bus arrived at the park and we headed straight up the small hill to the cable car. The view of the surrounding area was so pretty, and we took many pictures from the cable car and from the observation platform once we got out. Then we got serious and started our hike up to the peak. And very soon we were really glad we'd stopped to get the pictures before starting our hike because rain clouds rolled in about 10 minutes into our hike, and the view was all foggy-white after that. Except for the disappointment of not getting to take very many scenery pictures during our hike up and from the peak, we loved the hike, which included a suspension bridge and a long, long set of narrow stairs going pretty much up in nothingness until we reached the top of a rock cliff. After that we followed a trail made of huge rocks piled into a stairway and finally had to use ropes to pull ourselves to the peak so as not to slip back down the snowy and icy trail. The misty rain turned to light snow for the last 15 minutes or so of the hike, but by that point I was so boiling I loved having the snow hit my warm cheeks.

After a short rest and taking some photo beside the monument at the top, we hiked back down to the bottom of the mountain, which took us about 2 hours. This was mainly because the trail was stairs-made-of-boulders rather than an ordinary dirt trail. For most of it I had to step down with one foot and then have my other foot join the first on the same step. And add to that the rain making the rocks slippery. Anyway, it was a fun hike. The only bad part was that once we'd completed the hike and taken all the pictures we wanted to at the little tourist village at the bottom, we found out that we'd have to wait another two and a half hours for the next bus back to Jeonju. We ate the food we brought in the nearly-empty-and-made-totally-of-concrete-with-no-insulation-and-doors-that-didn't-totally-shut bus station, and when Jonathan commented that my chopstick skills seemed to have gotten worse (they're rather iffy at the best of times) I realized that my hands were pretty much completely frozen, even inside my gloves. So we packed up our stuff and set off in search of hot chocolate. The best we found was some pumpkin tea bags that didn't sound very appetizing in a gift shop, so we decided to chance the fancy-looking hotel and were pleasantly surprised to find a very warm and completely empty dining room. The lady at the hotel front desk brought us warm water and when we learned there was no hot chocolate on the premises we decided to go with her suggestion of traditional Korean tea. Wow, was it ever amazing! It tasted like something I recognized, but I never could figure out what. (Actually, the taste kind of reminded me of a good spice smell from my grandparents kitchen.) At the bottom of the teacups were orange chunks of something that looked kind of fruit-like, but we had no idea what. In any case, it was delicious and did a good job to warm us up. Then we stayed there talking until the lady turned the heater off (which must have been a sign for us to leave) and the room cooled way down, almost to the bus-station temperature, it seemed to me. So we took the hint and headed back to the bus station where we invented many new exercises for keeping warm (some of which involved pretending to be various forest creatures in a crude version of charades). I tried to make some origami from some cough candy wrappers Jonathan had, but my hands got too cold again. FINALLY, the bus came and we scampered on it, so happy for the warmth. Needless to say, when we got back to our room I jumped under the covers and stayed there for the rest of the night. Ahhh, so glad for warm, fuzzy blankets!
- Ali

The map of the mountain we hiked - we took the tram up from the lower center of the map but hiked all the way down

Wooden statues that greeted us as we walked up to the cable car

A display showing the different cables used on the tram

Heading up the mountain (you can view the peak and monument just to the left of the middle of the picture)

Ali

Nearing the top of the tramway

The "trail" immediately begins going steeply up

Suspension bridge

Ali on the bridge

Jonathan on the bridge

Looking back after crossing (and climbing a bit more)

We are heading to that stairway on the left

Some handy rock stairs

Finally arriving at the stairway - it's pretty steep!

Another shot showing the cliff we'll be ascending

Ali climbing

Jonathan on his way up

This is what the stairs looked like standing up - that's how close to my (Jonathan's) face they were

This is the top of the stairs - barely enough headroom!

Quite the stairway

Everything here is all fenced in - they don't want people falling off I guess

After hiking a good ways further up, and getting to the main ridge, we found snow!
We must have been hiking on the southern side of the mountain before.

The ropes were actually helpful, since the snow was packed into ice in many places

At the summit!

Ali celebrates :)

Even though it was a complete whiteout up there between the fog and snow, there was still a nice view

Mistical view on the way down

About to pass under the suspension bridge - we could hardly see it through the fog

Back at the base of the tram that we didn't ride down, we watch a car coming in

All the light poles along this section of road had ducks on them

Another view - not the mountain we went up but a nearby one

Panorama from the parking lot - the part we hiked is just left of center, where it looks the most rugged (click to view larger)

Here you can see the tramway, and the cliffs above, but not the summit, it never did come out of the clouds

The road - a very scenic drive

We did it! :)

This traditional Korean tea helped us to warm up afterward (does anyone know what kind it is?)

For pictures and commentary about our other day trips in Jeollabuk-do, click the links below.
Day 1: Muju
Day 3: Byeonsan Bando