Fall Hike at Naejangsan

Decked out in the latest hiking fashions, equipped with a cup full of silk worm larva in one hand and a walking stick in the other, as soon as the weekend hits, the Koreans head for the mountains. Even with hundreds of mountains in the Seoul vicinity, I still find myself surrounded by masses of Koreans looking to escape the city and experience nature. Rows of spices, ginseng, sweet potatoes, roasted pork, corn, persimmons, chest nuts and a variety of unidentifiable edibles.

Here are some of the pictures.

This is the map of the region with the park and the mountain.

At the base of the mountain is a little village with restaurants, motels, buses and LOTS of people.

Traffic jam. There's no escape!!

People heading up towards the entrance to the mountain trails.

I thought this picture was really cool. These big pots are traditionally Korean. Pretty much every household has at least one of them in which they make chimchee, a sort of pickled spicy cabbage that is said to have incredible healing powers.

No weekend hike would be complete without the local drag queen.

Mmmmm, roasted chestnuts.

Mmmmmm, mini shrimp stew.

Mmmmmmm, silk worm larva :).

So this was the little road that lead up to the park entrance. The colours were amazing.

This pictures is called, "Two foreigners and a red tree".

This tree looked like it was out of a spooky fairy tale.

Dried out river.

These two pictures are taken from another person who went on this hike.

Alright, so I promised a long time ago, that I would take a picture of the very common and super scary public toilets. I finally took a second to snap a shot of the "toilet" at one of the rest stops on the way to the mountain.