Summer Vacation Part 1: Wolchulsan National Park

So last week was my long awaited for vacation. And it's already over. Funny how that goes. Art and I left on Saturday for the southwestern city of Mokpo. It was our jumping off point for Wolchulsan National Park. Wolchulsan is the smallest national park in Korea and my goal was to hike clear across it in one day. Which I succeeded in doing. It was only an 8 kilometer hike anyway.

After much huffing and puffing, and several stops, Art was able to finish the first leg of the trip which ended at the highest footbridge in South Korea. After seeing it in a travel book one day, this his bridge became the impetus for my visit to Wolchulsan in the first place. It soars between two mountain peaks about 450 feet from the ground. It was very pretty but still mildly disappointing. I was hoping for something along the lines of a swaying Indiana Jones rope bridge. Instead it was really sturdy and concrete. Nonetheless, it was worth the trip out there anyway.

I left Art at the bridge and then made my way down and then back up to the highest peak in the park, Cheonhwangbong. It was stunning. As high as that bridge was, I was looking down on it from the Cheonhwangbong. I was all alone on the peak and besides a nice breeze it was silent as I looked down on the world. I pulled out my phone to text someone and the beep when I pressed the buttons sounded like thunder. It was really quite startling.

After hiking back down from the peak I hiked along the ridge of the mountains, for the most part alone. There were plenty of beautiful vistas to take in and I took my time. On the other side of the park I dipped my weary feet in a cool mountain stream and then finally made it to the other entrance where I got a cab home. My whole trek lasted about 7 hours and by the end I was exhausted and so soaked in sweat I wrung it out of my clothes.

The next day Art and I made our way back to Mokpo. We wanted to see a "quaint" little village along the way called Gurim. We had to take a cab there and the driver looked at us like we were insane when we told him that. Finally he dropped us off in the middle of a tiny, sleepy town, shrugged his shoulders and said "Gurim, here you are. Suckers!" (I added he suckers part, but I bet he was thinking it.) He was quite right; there wasn't much there. We finally found the pottery cultural center that we wanted to visit but there was nothing there either. The two story visitor center that the website bragged about was indeed there. What the website failed to mention, however, was that it was still under construction. There was a gift shop, however, and the nice lady there called a cab for us. Back in Mokpo we were joined by Stacy who had taken a bus down that day, and then we went to the ferry terminal to buy our tickets to Jeju Island for the next morning.

When we got there we found that the ferry was leaving that afternoon at 3:30. On a whim we entirely changed our plans and left right there for Jeju. To be continued...