Southern South Korea vacation

Hey everyone,

This is in response to Wes' challenge about postiing something memorable that has happened in the past week to the family blog. Here are four of my favorite memories of this past week. As you all know, your Momma and I went for a short vacation to the south-western area of South Korea from Sunday through to Friday. Here are a few of my favorite recollections:

1. Camping on a sandy beach in Geoji-do (Geoji Island). We had a fantastic spot right near the shoreline - the morning after a restful sleep, we woke up to find the sun warming the earth and a nice, cool refreshing breeze that was gently stirring the sea-water in the bay and rusting the poplar tree leaves - it was great making bacon and eggs on the beach and anticipating a wonderful day, which it was!

2. Camping on a rocky beach on Namhai-do. We found an area off a harbour that had huge trees and a good washroom - there was all kinds of motor-vehicles coming from the nearby village to the harbour for various purposes but that mostly died out about 8:00 p.m. Little did we know that at precisely 5:00 a.m. the next morning, the loudspeaker would start blaring something in Korean - whatever it was that was said, all kinds of engines and people were roving around the area shortly afterwards - it felt like we were right near the Indianapolis 500 speedway - haven't these Islanders ever heard of sleeping in?!? Needless to say, Mom and I were also up well before 6:00 after having listened to that racket for awhile - not restful by any means, but certainly interesting!

3. By day three, after 2 days of camping, Mom and I agreed we would stay at a place that had indoor showers - by that time we had driven to the city of Yeosu, which is at the end of a long peninsula - Yeosu will host the next world expo in 2012 (this year's expo is being held in Shanghai, China). Anyways, Mom had her heard on getting a pension (a cross between an apartment and a cottage) so we drove just north of the city to a beach - to get there, we had to drive through a narrow tunnel that was about 1/2 km long - it felt really weird but was interesting - southbound traffic had the right of way so, if we met someone, there were areas every 100 meters or so where we could pull off to the right to let them pass. Anyways, we found this amazing pension for only 60,000 won - two full bathrooms, a kitchen/dining room area, a full bedroom and a balcony overlooking the ocean about 20 meters directly below - absolutely gorgeous!!! Needless to say, we made the best of this opportunity while there!

4. On day 4, we decided to head out to Jirisan (Jiri Mountain) National Park, which contains the second highest mountain in South Korea - not much by European standards, Wes, but impressive to us "Prairie folk" flatlanders nonetheless! We decided to take a backroad in after visiting the city of Namwon - I had visited the city with some friends two years ago when Mom was in Canada with you kids and wanted to show her the area - anyways, after visiting, we took this road that was full of switchbacks up and down a mountain pass - there were times when I couldn't even get up some of the 20% + grades in second gear and had to downshift to 1st - a real challenge of my driving skills but so rewarding when we finally got to the top and had a view of both where we'd been and where we'd be going, both far below us!

We wished we'd remembered to pack the camera - shortly after we'd left Handong, Mom asked "Did we remember to pack the camera?" My response was "we?" Anyways, we had to be at the hospital by 10:00 (the surgeon was late so we would have had enough time to pick it up had we known that but that's the way things so sometimes. It was really too bad, since we'd seen some mighty beautiful areas, but there was no sense in whining about something it!

That's it for my favorite recollections of this past week - I'm looking forward to hearing from Mom and you girls, since Wes has already posted!

Love always and forever!!!

-Dad-
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