Day 9, Leg 9

Much better walk than yesterday. Shoes are still damp, but walking and the heat of my feet have done much to dry them. Some stats:

Distance: about 26.5 km

Time: from 5:35 a.m. to roughly 12:35 p.m., but with some rest breaks sprinkled in, plus lunch eaten en route

Steps: 39,332

Calories Burned: 4,218

Calories Consumed: 2,132 (deficit = 2086)

Today's walk was a bit of an adventure. It featured at least three long, steep hills, and at one point, Naver led me through a muddy construction site (I'm guessing its information hadn't been updated). As with the other hills, though, these were far from insurmountable. Heavy breathing, but no real fatigue. My training since May has been paying dividends this trip. 

And let me say that, thus far, the east-coast trail has proven hillier compared to the Four Rivers trail. I'm not sure what I was expecting this trip; I'd studied some biker videos on YouTube, and I'd read the blog of an Australian girl who had biked the trail some years back, but despite all that, I didn't have the best sense of the seaside terrain. Now I know: expect hills. 

So without any rain today, I moved along at a slow-but-steady pace. The first hill came within five minutes of leaving Full House Pension. It could have been bad had it been longer, but it leveled off long before I was tired. The second big hill came close to the halfway point of today's trail, and the third big hill came toward the end. I simply lowered my head and chugged my way up all three hills. 

I did catch the sunrise while outside this morning; it occurred at 6:14 a.m., and the sun was right on schedule. You might end up thinking I got a bit obsessive with my photographs of the sunrise, but if there's one thing you don't get along the Four Rivers trail, it's sunrises and sunsets because you're in river valleys most of the time. My only regret is that I spent so much time looking through my camera at the sun that I didn't really get to experience the sunrise directly. I'll do that tomorrow or Tuesday, assuming my route takes me by the seashore when the sun comes up. No photos, just pure experience.

Have I mentioned how much of the east-coast trail has me walking exposed on road shoulders? Yeah, it's not very safe. Once in a while, the trail splits off and is dedicated to bikers (and walkers) only, but for the most part, I'm next to traffic, or on a road where cars pass me frequently. I don't like this situation.

In leaving the north part of Samcheok this morning, and after that initial hill, I found myself walking along a kitschy beach, empty at 5:45 in the morning, made surreal by purple mood lighting and interesting sculptures along its length. Of course, I also passed plenty of closed restaurants, piers, wharves, and convenience stores. As I said, human civilization repeats itself quasi-fractally. I passed villages and lone, abandoned buildings, old military emplacements, and plenty of barbed-wire fencing. Being barely a third of the way down the coast, I'm still close enough to the DMZ to see reminders of South Korea's military alert status. Or will it be like this all the way down? Actually, I think it will.

I passed a park, of sorts, with sculptures in it, and I couldn't help myself: I stopped and took pictures of all the sculptures, including one that looked like a person being hit in the face full-speed by a bird.

The coast itself tends to undulate, a series of ess-curves. As on other days, there was a major detour away from the ocean, and during that part of the walk, I was again reminded of the Four Rivers path.

Given how much I've enjoyed some of the segments I've walked over the course of nine days, I've been thinking about which segments I'd like to relive once I'm done with the principal walk. Days 5 and 6 come immediately to mind, and today's walk wasn't bad, either. And getting to these cities and back to Seoul via bus or train is easier than finding transportation to and from certain segments of the Four Rivers path. So this is something I'm already thinking about.

I was supposed to end up at one pension, but the lady told me over the phone that she had no available rooms, so I used the 여기어때 app to find another nearby pension, and there were two just a kilometer away (this will make tomorrow's walk that much shorter). I'm now at Gratia Pension in the southern part of Samcheok.

When I called Gratia to ask about a room, the man on the other end tersely told me to wait an hour, thus leaving me in suspense. But a few minutes later, a woman at that same number called back, and she said they did have a room, and she would be there to see me shortly. I discovered that the man and lady are a husband-and-wife team running the place; she was all bubbly friendliness while the man was gruff and taciturn. Opposites attract sometimes. For W100,000, the price of a standard room at a Doubletree Inn, I got a two-story pension room all to myself. It's not quite as nice as Libertar Pension on the Four Rivers trail, but it's clean, and there's no denying how friendly and accommodating the female manager is.

And now, I'm about to find out how fast this place's WiFi is as I upload the day's pics and put in some captions while the day is still fresh in my mind.

PHOTO ESSAY

pre-dawn sky

the resort I'm too poor to stay at

let the beach kitsch begin

gag... awk...

Well, that's one way to camp, I guess.

stairs to mystery!

6:13 a.m., just before sunrise

6:14! Let the fireworks begin!

angry god arises

zooming back a bit

zooming back more

amazing

abandoned building

god among the clouds

There's a church in this building?

a park with a sculpture garden... but is this a sculpture?

Bam! Birdstrike! Full in the face!

hill

still hill

drying skates

and rare drying squid

aggressive advertising

more modest advertising

Sometimes, I take a shot simply because there are so many colors to see.

Now, there's a lion.

sign for Rose Park

heavy industry, right by those roses

What did the chair do to deserve such a fate?

taking a look back at the mud I've already tromped through

yes, the road goes this way

whew... real road

not easy being green, or any other color

I was fascinated by the pattern.

hill

the day's goal, 9.5 km from the start point, with another 16-17 km to the end

the reward of a hill is the view from the top

I should have flipped this image. Sorry!

Jesus math, related to the parable of the lost sheep, I think: lose one, and you may as well have lost them all; gain one, and it's like gaining them all. Or something like that. 

no swimming

a sign saying "minbak," but the N is missing, so it says "mibak"

another place I can't afford

here's its name

Sallimyok ("forest bathing") is a thing that may, in fact, have some scientific justification. In one of our textbooks at work, there's a reading passage all about forest bathing, which is a thing in Japan, too. Trees release phytoncides, which you breathe in, and which are supposedly good for health.

What you don't see, in the above contemplative picture, is how the girl ended up tripping over her own feet, stumbling awkwardly (and comically) for a few steps before righting herself. And I was there to witness the whole shameful thing. See what I mean? The sea makes you stupid.

so this is the sacred spot where the group BTS had a photo shoot once... all bow down!

watering station

I caught these bikers by sitting on a bench and aiming my camera in front of me, waiting for the riders to pass by. Click!

Korean suburbs, sort of

I really wanted some soondae-guk, but it was only 10:30

again with the feeling that I'm on the Four Rivers trail

Cars drive illegally on bike paths all the time.

hill

big ol' squash

The clouds are unreal.

going thataway

oh, yes, Poison Girls, a nice, big hill

up it goes

and up

more stairs to mystery

impressive

...aaaand up

some really angry-looking berries

edible?

the pension I was supposed to stay at

stopped here for lunch

mandu and naengmyeon

the resto

walking to that first pension

the first pension is off to the right... turned out to be full

You probably have no sense of scale with these dead-frog/toad pics, but this fucker was huge.

walking to second pension now

arrived

ADDENDUM: I took the following pic to illustrate something I've seen a lot of on this trip: lodging that is one thing, but advertises itself as something else for the sake of marketing. 

The sign says, roughly, "pension-style minbak." I admit I'm curious as to what that might entail. A minbak is, traditionally, just a room in a house that's used by paying guests. Many of the minbak I've passed are something else, though, maybe closer to dorms or hasuk in form: a small room to stay in for cheap, a communal bathroom, and possible access to food on the premises at a scheduled time (that would be true of a traditional minbak, anyway, where you can eat dinner with the family if they offer).

I've seen signs for "pension-style motel" as well, so I'm wondering how cut-and-dried the usual categories are. "Pension-style minbak" is a platypus-like straddling of categories, an egg-laying mammal. I'm really curious what that means, and how much it costs. A pension usually has a kitchenette,  and it'll cost you over W100,000 in most cases. Would that be true of a pension-style minbak?