Tag Archives: Hiking

Memorial Day Weekend Get Away (part 2)

After an awesome weekend in Songtan we headed home, unpacked, relaxed for about an hour and decided to get back out on the road and drive around without a plan or place in mind. We invited our friends and they gladly accepted to join us.

We drove throughout various country roads and ended up at Beomryunsa Temple 범륜사(절). The temple is located at the edge of Mt. Gamak a well known mountain in Paju-si. Information on this temple was extremely hard to find. We had to search for a few hours and use Google® Earth to fly around a bit to see where the pictures were taken. Our iphone’s® geotag didn’t work so well and was quite a bit off. Once we found the location on Google® Earth there was a place marker for a temple, the information is listed below:

Directions: South Korea Gyeonggi-do Paju-si Jeokseong-myeon Seolma-ri 산21-1

More information:
Google®Maps Information

INVIL Central Council Website(Copyright 2002)

As we are driving around the countryside we noticed that we were the only non-Koreans in the area; information (in English) is extremely hard to find on the temple and after researching we learned that the Beomryunsa Temple, which dated far back to the Shilla Dynasty and was rebuilt in 1970. There was also the Bittul Tombstone (also called Seolinguibi), which leaned to one side. We are still trying to find more information on the temple and if anyone has more please send us an email.

Hope you have a great but safe holiday weekend.

Soyosan (Mountain)

Today we Bee’s buzzed by the Soyosan Mountain located on the outskirts of Dongducheon City. The term Soyosan means, “walking” and walking is what we did! This mountain is relatively small standing 587m tall but boast lush forest, hiking paths, stone bridges, Korean style restaurants/ Inn’s, waterfalls, Caves, and Jajaeam (small Buddhist temple). Don’t let the size statement fool you because this mountain can be steep and narrow at times on the way up. We started to refer to the Korean hikers as billy goats because no matter what the age they just keep passing you effortlessly.

Non- Dongducheon visitors must pay an admission fee of 1,000 won. This fee helps to preserve and maintain Soyosans upkeep. Unlike the states we quickly took notice that there is no litter on the ground, no graffiti to be found anywhere, all of the flower beds and paths are weeded nicely, restrooms are kept up with, and they provide high pressure air machines to blow the dirt off the bottom of your hiking boots or shoes.

On the mountain we meet a little Korean boy hiking with his family who was very very eager to tell us An-nyung-ha-se-yo, a formal hello in Korean, that he kept saying it repeatedly awaiting for our responses. We also had the chance to meet two great new American friends that are teaching English in the area at one of the International public schools. We wanted to say thank you again for taking our picture for our blog! We look forward to bumping into them again too!

Larry bought me a wooden prayer bead bracelet at a vendor near the buddhist temple to remember our trip. The vendor stand had prayer candles for purchase, various wooden prayer bead bracelets, necklaces, and cast iron stones to write prayers on.

Stay tuned for more pictures, as we are planning another trip back to Soyosan with friends to picnic, check out the spring leaves and flowers, and finish hiking our way to the top.