Oliver and Ocean

Roadside food

Another shot from the trip. On a road trip, you not only have the rest stops, but little stores and food stands. The favorite types of food for sale seemed to be corn, grapes, rice cake, potatos, and bread filled with sweet red bean paste. The kids slept a good portion of the way while Jack and I ate, and ate, and ate.

Sokcho Vacation, finale

The last morning, we got the kids up at 5:30 so that we could watch the sunrise. So, we wrangled the grumpy bunch to the lookout point, but didn't see much since it was overcast. Still, it was nice to get up early to look at the ocean. Not many people out that early, but we weren't the only ones at the lookout point.

One of the pagodas had a painting of the area on its ceiling.

The photo below is my favorite. I like the colors. It's just really very beautiful there.

Below is a view of Sokcho, the fish market, and harbor.

After leaving the scenic view, we headed to yet another hot springs for a relaxing bath. The hotel/spa lobby was fairly typical of lobbies here. You don't see a lot of tshirts and bumper stickers for sale for tourists. Instead, you'll see local wine and honey, dried fish, dried seaweed, and other types of edibles associated with the area.

Ronan, the only non-grumpy child in the bunch (despite a fit thrown in the bathhouse over some milk), so we walked a bit along a trail next to the hotel/spa. We found some birds--what are these--turkeys? Anyway, that was something new to see.

After checking out of the minkbak, we drove to the beach for one last walk.

There's a cool little lighthouse there that I've seen in postcards. As we walked to it, we saw crabs and birds.

And, more advertisements. They're everywhere.

The beach was lovely. It was so clean and crowd-free. And, the sun FINALLY came out. Would have loved to have stayed and just hung out on the beach that day. It seemed that, as soon as we loaded the car, the sun appeared and the temp shot up. Oh well. At least no sunburns this trip.

Oliver felt the same way. He was not a happy camper when we announced it was time to pile into the car and head back up to Seoul.

Along the way, we found this fabulous rest stop. Years ago, every rest stop I visited reaked of urine and the floors had at least 1/2 inch of water on them. Trot music (music in a one-two rhythm that older people tend to listen to; tacky stuff, but can be a lot of fun to poke fun at) blasted from speakers, etc. Now, it seems people are competing to have the best rest stops. This one won--if there was a competition. I've never seen a cleaner, more relaxing one anywhere--Korea or the States. There was a little garden out back where we had some snacks.

When we reached Seoul, we faced traffic. Basically, when we entered the metropolitan area, it took us an hour to finally reach our home. But heck, who cares about traffic when you can buy coffee and snacks from masked freeway hawkers weaving their carts through traffic? Yes, one of the great things about Korea.

Sokcho Vacation, part 3

The morning of our second day began with a semi-hike (we didn't make it very far) through Seoraksan National Park after getting some rain gear. Seoraksan is the highest mountain in the Taebaek Mountain range; a range that runs north to south and is considered by many to be the backbone of the Korean peninsula. But, what's the good of a hike without some hearty snacks? I'll take my snails roasted, please. My kids, once again, shocked me by sucking the little buggars out of their shells. I had to pass on this one.

Besides the snacks, the giant Buddha statue is one of the first things that greats you at Seoraksan park. The kids posed with the statue in the top picture above. For some reason, Jack forgot totally about this statue. He insisted there was no giant Buddha statue on Seoraksan when I was telling the kids about what we'd see on the hike. I mean, how could you forget something like this?

Jack and Ronan pooped out about a 10th of the way up the trail. Dahin, Oliver, and I continued for a little while. It was fun seeing the mountain streams and counting the many, many chipmunks (one seen in camouflage in the pic below).

When we came back down from the trail, we found Ronan and Jack talking with a fortune teller. Man, what they'll get into when we're not around....

A Buddhist temple provided a convenient potty and water break for 'toilet man' (see sign below)and his gang.

I had a hard time figuring this one out. I gave up after a while and just got something to eat.

The kids stack stones and make wishes; a favorite mountain hike pastime.

After hiking, we hit a hot springs and had very relaxing baths in this amazing mineral water. My skin and spirits felt much, much better afterwards. We regrouped at the minbak and charted our next plan of action, which included (of course) voguing by the beach road (directly below), attempting to get some decent family shots (complete failure--an activity that included Oliver shaking his little butt at the camera and saying, "Look at my boo-deee" over, and over, and over again), and shooting off more roman candles--hell yeah!

After our photo shoot, we headed to another fish market (I know, shocker) where the fish-hawking ajumas scared the crap out of me. Man, they're aggressive. Below, the boys pose on a boat, which Oliver insisted was really ok to take for a little ride around the harbor so we could do some fishing--he really wanted to go fishing.

You can see the misty mountains in the background behind the fish market and boats.

Scary ajuma exhibit A (above) and B (below--stronger evidence).

We chose one of the least aggressive fish sellers for our dinner (and faced the evil death stares of surrounding ajumas who hated us for not choosing THEM; grrr) and Oliver kind of got to do some fishing. He pointed at fish and the ajuma fished them out of their containers.

Then, we made our way through the maze of tanks and water (totally stressed Ronan out to get his feet wet)...

...to the ajuma who would then cut the fish up and put it on a platter, ready for us to eat.

We took the platter upstairs with some sesame leaves, lettuce, garlic, kuch'u chang (red pepper paste), soy sauce, and peppers and ordered some rice and soda and dug in.

Like I said in an earlier post, the kids are not that into raw fish, so, after we ate at the fish market and did more sparklers and roman candles, we headed back to the beach front road in front of our minbak. It's lined with little eateries that serve a variety of seafood. Most of these cater to people wanting to sit outside and drink, but we got some roasted clams at one of them and sat at a little candlelit table by the ocean.

After eating, we hung out by the ocean for a while and finally rested at a bench where we sat listening to the ocean. Ronan fell asleep in my arms and we headed back to our room for another night's sleep. Day 3, the last hurrah, coming tomorrow...