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