Taebaeksan

We are just finishing a long fantastic weekend. Too short in my opinion! On Saturday we headed up to Taebaeck, a city about an hour and a half from Samcheock, with two friends, Kate and Chad. Taebaeck used to be the main mining area in South Korea. There is a mining museum there that we didn't have time to go to this time but hear it's quite worth it.
The first evening we just hung out and went to eat at tiny little shop near our hotel.




I can pretty much never go wrong with the bibimbap. But Kate unfortunately got stuck with some cold soybean soup that pretty much just tasted like a bowl of plain soymilk with noodles. Mmmm...(they went out for pizza later so all was not lost).

After a short walking tour of Taebaeck, including stops to literary stores that sell well known books like "Dick"...(have you read that?),

...I got tired and left the group to go get pizza while I lazed about in the hotel watching reruns of "That 70's show". Bliss!

The next day we had a convenience store breakfast of yogurt and cereal and headed off to the mountain.
The hike started off pretty steep...and we were drenched with sweat 5 minutes in. Everything was green and lush, breathtaking, magically mist filled and oh so humid.
This little guy greeted us at the beginning of the hike, letting us know what to do in case of an emergency!





We wondered if we were meant to take this contraption down to the temple we were heading down too! Don't worry, we didn't!


A little further up we got to a beautiful temple.



And several altars...



Next we ade our way up to the top of the mountain on one of the two peaks we summited. On the tops were huge stone altars. And beautiful misty mountain top views.




A the top of the second peak we ran into an English speaking Korean woman who was out with her family. As it was Chuseok, which is a major holiday here (sort of like Thanksgiving), they kindly offered us rice cakes and conversation.


Tons of Lord of the Rings esque vegetation...Ah!


Some tree dwellers we saw on the way down...
Then we headed back down, had some surprisingly scrumptious bagels and cream cheese at the Dunkin' doughnuts, and caught the bus back to Samcheock.