August 9, 2006
David and I spent a blissful week camping between Sokcho, a town on the East Sea (otherwise known as the Sea of Japan), and Seolaksan National Park, which is about 12 kms from Sokcho, up in the mountains. Sokcho, which lies directly on the sea, is so well situated that the tourist bureau promotes it as The Tourist City Created by God. I think the camp ground should petition to have the same tag used for it's location: there aren't tons of camping sites in Korea, since it's so densely populated, but this one is perfectly placed between the coast and the park and there's a bus that runs between the two every 15 minutes. You'd think that would be perfect enough, but camping is such a popular activity, especially for families, that the campground shows movies every night on an outdoor screen. David was so taken with the idea of watching movies on a big screen while camping that he had to check out the movies they showed while we were there: The Day After Tomorrow, Chronicles of Narnia, and Welcome to Dongmakgol, an offbeat Korean movie about a mountain village's experience with the Korean war.
Thankfully, the Koreans don't do much dubbing, so the two American movies were in English with Korean subtitles, but we still didn't actually watch them, mostly because we were exhausted from our various activities during the day. Two mornings we spent hiking to temples and then a waterfall, after which lazing about camp was required before going into town for dinner. Our last day we spent all day on the mountain hiking up to one of the local peaks on a 13 km trail. The trail was a great technical hiking/light bouldering one; lots of fun going up, but rather jarring on the way down. We had a good time, but David described the day as "blisterful," which is apt. We were well rested for the long hike, though, having spent the previous day doing our best imitations of beach bums and paddling in the sea.
If only we had found such a great place to relax sooner than the week before we have to leave.
