Chiakasan National Park and the Prettiest Korean Temple

Hello, This is M&M and I am going to tell you all about our day of another amazing waterfall hike. Mom and Talia had decided to take hike to a waterfall with our AMAZING friends the Walkers! So we hopped in the car at like 6:30-7:00ish and drove up to the waterfall. We stopped at a currency exchange before we got off base and did a kid swap. I want in the Walker's car while Brylee (Little A's BFF ) hopped in our car. We then drove about 2 hours to get to the waterfall. After about 2 and a half hours (because of traffic) we got to the spot where the trail lead to the waterfall.

We all regrouped and started hiking the trail. The trail was a little long but it was so beautiful! We passed over bridges and walked by a stream.  We also walked past a super cool dragon statue.

We stopped by a temple along the way and of course, we HAD to check it out! It was a HUGE and colorful temple! There was so many parts to it. When you first walked in through a little building it had the four protector gods.  They were all so weird with their faces, but they were very colorful.

This building was one of the prettiest Korean temples I have seen.  The paint was bright and beautiful.  The ceiling was one of my favorite parts, it was amazing.

There was one part where there was hundreds of white lanterns with wishes tied to them hung all over. This was cool to see.

It was a beautiful temple and probably my favorite out of all the Korea temples.  I am glad I got to see it with my best friend.  We love the Walkers.

We kept walking after about 45 minutes of exploring every inch of that temple. There was this cool bell tower too.  I wanted to jump in it and ring the bell, but I think mom would have killed me.

We left the temple and went over bridges, fought some dragons, tripped a couple of times on loose stones, and finally got to the sign that said Waterfall 1 kilometer. We all cheered and started hiking faster.

We were all saying that this must be a huge waterfall because there was a huge roar of rushing water. We then didn't know that was the river next to us. We finally got to the waterfall after about 5 more minutes of walking. What we saw was the tiniest waterfall EVER!! It was about 5 feet high and wasn't even that deep. There was a little pond with little fish everywhere in it at the so-called waterfall. You almost can't even see it in the picture, it was so tiny.

We didn't let the tiny waterfall ruin our day, so we sat on some rocks and and ate our lunches that we brought. I wanted to see how many fish were in the pond so I threw a tiny piece of bread and then about 1,000+ fish darted to get it out of nowhere! There was so many.

After hanging out at the waterfall for about another hour we started to head back. Monster, of course fell asleep on the hike back.

The hike back was cool because we saw a lot of insects and cool bugs.  The catapillers were neat because there were a lot of them and they were different colors.  There was a big black one that looked like a mustache.  We didn't know if they were poisonous, so we just looked at them and didn't touch them.  

We  made our way back to the car to drive just a little bit to our next adventure at the Wonju Railbikes!

A Colorful Korean Fall at the Haeinsa Temple

For my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I serve in the Primary for all the Military congregations in South Korea.  This Sunday, I was needing to go to Daegu to help with the Primary in that area.  We decided that we would make today a family day-trip, and head to the Haeinsa Temple in Gayasan National Park after my visit in Daegu.  We missed the opportunity to see the fall colors of South Korea last year, so we would be able to not only see the national park in the splash of fall colors, but also see the ancient Buddhist Temple. 

As with most driving in South Korea, the directions can be a little off.  I followed Waze to the supposed destination, then we had to rely on the brown signs posted for directions to the temple.  We came to a really neat pavilion with two large Buddha's and a rather large pagoda, we thought that this must be the stop, so we pulled over, put our jackets on and went out to take in the beautiful colors around us.  We had to cross a bridge to get to the site, and it was such a beauty!

We explored the area for a while.  The kids all had fun pointing out the different colors that the tree leaves were changing too.  Until this point, our kids have only lived in warm states that don't have the color changing fall, so this was a new adventure for them.

After looking at Google Maps, Waze, and attempting to read a few signs, we came to the conclusion that this beautiful spot was not the Haeinsa Temple that we were seeking.  So we got back in the car to find it.  We took a few wrong turns, had to show the locals a picture and kept saying "temple?temple?", and not to mention we have mastered the amazing art of mime, we finally found the right place.

The grounds for the Haeinsa Temple is huge!  We first stopped at the Wongyeongwangsabi Monument.  

After loving the sites and colors at the monument we made our way to the Iljumun Gate and walked the beautiful trail to the Bonghwangmun Gate. The Iljumun Gate is considered a sacred place because it was the first gate that every sattya had to pass to become a Buddha. 

The Temple Pavilion was crisp, clean and full of pagodas and worshiping halls.  We even got to see a bell.  Little Monster had it set on his mind that he was going to ring the bell, it was a really good thing we had the hiking backpack, because he was definitely living up to his nickname.

We then made our way towards the back of the temple to the main reason we wanted to come, to see the original Buddha printing blocks in the Tripitaka Koreana. This is the most famous national treasure of the Haeinsa Temple.  It is the most comprehensive and oldest collection of original Buddhist scripture.  There are over 81,000 of these wood blocks.  Photos are not allowed inside and the housing is only open certain hours of the day.  We got there with about 10 minutes to spare, but in Korean fashion, they would not let us enter, they said they were closed.  We were able to peek in and see the inside, but not able to take the time to walk around.  That was probably for the best, since Monster was done and we verbally screaming about it.  They were probably worried our kids would take 2 minutes to destroy a national artifact.  

We took our cue from Monster that it was time to head home.  We took the scenic route to our car and took some last pictures of the oranges, yellows, greens, and reds of the fall around us.  Everyone was glad we made this little detour to the temple and made a fun family day out of it.

Jinju Lantern Festival

The Jinju Namgang Yudeung Festival is a spectacular site to behold.  The beautifully made lanterns are lit as wishes for world peace and fortune for mankind.  There were lanterns on land and lanterns in the river.  When I first heard of this festival I was picturing a scene from Disney's Tangled where floating lanterns are lit and float into the sky filling it with sparkling lights.  I was very much wrong.  The lanterns in Korea are made from a silk-like material that is stretched over a wire frame, then painted.  The beautifully detailed larger then life lanterns were awe inspiring and so fun to see.

Our first stop at the festival was the Music Fountain area where lanterns littered the entire area.  This was an extremely kid-friendly area, since the lanterns were made to resemble famous cartoon characters.  Monster especially loved all the "Good Guys!" as he ran around pointing out Batman, Spiderman, Ironman and more.

All of the kids loved the life size dinosaur that was made and shaped to look as if it was eating them.

M&M and Little A especially loved the unicorn.  Not only was the unicorn life size and beautiful, but the artist made it so kids could sit on the unicorn, ride it (it had springs on the feet), and take a picture.  

Another super neat lantern was the dinosaur slide.  Some amazing artist made a lantern slide that was shaped as a dinosaur and then made the tail into a slide.  All the kids had a blast sliding down the dinosaur lantern slide.

Since the festival was in such a large area, the city created floating bridges to make it easier and faster to get across the river to see all the exhibits.  We paid 5,000 won a person to get unlimited access to all the bridges.  We crossed the bridge and made our way over to the Chokseoklu, Jinjuseong castle.  The entire grounds of the Chokseoklu was covered in so many lanterns.  There was an entire area that looked like a village that was made of all lanterns.  My favorite was a small pavilion that was a lantern.  I seriously thought it was real until I walked right up to it and knocked on it.  There were even lantern trees that were in the lantern village.  It was something pretty neat.

We spent a good amount of time seeing all the lanterns around the Chokseoklu.  We noticed that the sun was beginning to set, so we wanted to hurry to the other side of the river to see the Desire Lantern tunnel.

After we crossed the bridge, we came to an endless lantern tunnel filled with gorgeous red and blue lanterns.

As we walked into the tunnel, all the lanterns came on and we found ourselves surrounded by a red glow of lights.  I learned that these lanterns contain wishes, dreams and desires of all the people from the area.  They write their stories on the lanterns then hang them up.  It was neat being in a tunnel of wishes and dreams.  It was almost as if the lanterns were whispering to us.

When we exited the tunnel, we noticed that some of the lanterns were lit up nice and bright.  It was fun to look across the river and see the Chokeoklu brightly shining.

We spent the last hour oohing and awing over the lanterns that were lit up.  Seeing the silk-like material all painted during the daylight was pretty neat, but seeing it with lights under to illuminate the lantern was something else entirely different and magical.  I loved every second of it.

As the light from the sky kept disappearing and darkness started creeping in, I was sad to hear the announcement that the typhoon had knocked out a lot of the light sources and many of the lanterns would not be working tonight.  By the time we left about 1/3 of the lanterns were lit up.  It was a little saddening to come all this way and not see all the lanterns in their glory, but what we were able to see was pretty amazing.

Another reason the festival was wonderful is because we had amazing friends to share it with.  I am so glad we had the Budenbenders, Livaudais and the Schwartz to celebrate the festival with us.

As we were crossing the street to wait in line for the bus, Corianne texted and said more lights just got fixed.  I begged Kevin if we could run back and see them.  He wasn't too happy about walking all the way back just to look at 'something we already saw', as he put it, but he was sweet enough to indulge me and and walk back so I could see the lights.  It was fun seeing such vibrant colors in the darkness.  It reminded me of a quote by Robert D. Hales, "Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space at the same time.  Light dispels darkness.  When light is present, darkness is vanquished and must depart.  More importantly, darkness cannot conquer light unless the light is diminished or departs."  I just wanted to see all the light that took over the darkness.  It was beautiful and worth the walk back.