Ganchon

A village near the border of Chuncheon is where we headed to this weekend. It is popular with Seoulites looking for a weekend getaway. During the winter, people frequent the ski resort. In the summer, couples come to bicycle around the town and check out Munbae village and Gugok falls. Since it is summer, we came like everyone else to cycle around.

Ganchon is a short 15 minute train ride from Nam Chuncheon. We left around 10:30 am and we wore shorts and flip flops because it had been rainy and there were puddles everywhere. Once we got on the train, Michael noticed it was raining pretty hard. We walked out of the train station in a hurry, trying to avoid getting too wet. We stopped into the first convenience store we could and bought a compact umbrella (Since we planned on biking and have only large umbrellas that do not have portability, we did not bring one of the 3 umbrellas we own). We walked around the town for a while, trying to find a place to eat. Not a vegetarian-friendly town to be in. We finally settled in at I Love Pizza and bought a cheese pizza to share.

After lunch, it was still raining just as hard. We stopped at a convenience store again and purchased ponchos (Which by the way, are useless here. They are button down and have holes everywhere for rain to get in.). We finally rented bikes and set off on the trails. Despite the rain, it was a pretty cool experience. Really scenic, low traffic, and just the right temperature.

We rode on a bike path that went through town. There were spectacular views of the mountains, a restaurant with live chickens, ducks and rabbits in the backyard (I wish that I could have liberated them!), and some little attractions on the way (totems, a pagoda, farms, etc). We rode for about a km or so through bike trails and finally took the path that led to the waterfall, another 2.6 km. We finally arrived at the entrance to the park and entrance was 1600 won each. For a small amount of money, Korea is able to keep their parks really nice and clean.

It was about 1.8 km to the waterfall from there. The walk was fairly easy, although it was going uphill on a mountainside, so it would be a bit of a workout for people who are in terrible shape. We walked past several waterfall goers that were prepared with ponchos and umbrellas, but some were wearing sneakers and had to slosh through ankle-deep puddles. I was so glad we were in flip-flops.

The waterfall was both awesome and horrifying at the same time. There is a little rope so you don't fall down the falls, but it was very windy and I was in flip-flops on a slippery staircase.

The way back was much easier since it was downhill. It took us about 20 minutes to walk back down to our bikes and another 20 to bike back to the rental place. We arrived soaked at the train station at exactly 3 pm. Lucky us, the next train was at 4:09 and so we had to find something to do for an hour in the pouring rain. We ended up walking down to a convenience store for some ice cream and then I spent a good 15 minutes in the bathroom using the hand dryer to dry my shirt and hair.

Upon arriving home around 4:30, we immediately changed out of our wet clothes and snuggled up with Gizmo who kept us warm : ) It was the coldest day of summer so far, about 78 degrees F.

Michael made a video of our trip, which you can watch here:



You can also check out his youtube page for this and additional Korea videos at LovebirdsinKorea.

Here is the photo album of our day if you are interested:

Ganchon