"Rocky Mountain High"

May 5th marked the Korean national holiday of Children's Day.  Parents give presents to their children, as well as spend the day with them by taking them to museums, amusement parks, the zoo, or shopping. There is no school on Children's Day which makes it an awesome day for me in the form of a broken-up work week!

My girlfriend also had the day off, so we got together with our friend Chang-soo, and decided to hike Surisan again (see my November post here) but this time, we left from a different location, and hiked all the way to the summit.  It was an exhausting 4-5 hour hike, but great exercise!

Here is a map of our trip: (yellow is our starting location, red is final stop). We took the train and buses to these locations, as walking would easily have taken another 3-4 hours.

At the base of the mountain was a small countryside village with some beautifully painted walls and homes.

 

After the first leg of our journey we stopped at a small Buddhist temple. Korea is getting ready for Buddha's Birthday, a very large holiday here.

Lanterns adorn much of the landscape

Candy and money are placed near the temples as well

 

The temple surrounded by spring blooming around it

 

A view of green mountains and Ansan and Suwon in the far distance

A quick rest and we're back on the trail... (note: more lanterns...)

After another hour or so, we make it near the summit...

The amazing views at the summit...

Hiking back down, towards Anyang

 

We stopped at the base of the mountain and drank some makkoli and haemul pajeon.(along with the traditional side dish of kimchi of course!)  Makkoli is a milky rice alcohol and haemul pajeon is a seafood and green onion pancake.

I wish I could have every Wednesday off...