Soyosan hike

On Saturday, April 13th, we decided to finally explore a popular hiking mountain just a few minutes north of us, called Soyosan. (San means mountain in Korean.) People come from all over to hike this mountain. (The people in Korea are really big into hiking. It probably has something to do with 70% or more of the land that is covered in mountains.) It was a beautiful spring day, so we decided to explore. Based on our previous hiking mountains in Korea adventures, we decided not to take the stroller as we expected stairs. Instead, Chris carried Maddie on his back in our baby carrier. Her wiggling gave his picture-taking an extra challenge, but he was up to the challenge.

The first part of the path was just a minor incline with different statues and things to see. The paths were paved with the comfy, track-like material.

She's quite the photogenic poser. :)

A little map and history of the mountain.

See that little nook in the cave? It's a little Buddhist place to worship.

Here it is closer up. Cool, huh?

After that, we hit the stairs, and there were a lot of them. 

Awesome view from the top of one set of stairs.

One of the  many little waterfalls.

At one of the higher landing points, there was a Buddhist temple. It's very common for Buddhist temples to be up in the mountains. Buddha's birthday is coming up in May, and we've seen more and more of these lanterns coming out everywhere in preparation for the celebration!

Inside the main temple. We wanted to look closer, but being unfamiliar with Buddhist custom and etiquette, we didn't want to be disrespectful, especially since people were in there worshiping.

The outside of the temple.

There were some other buildings there including a gift shop, a tea shop, etc.

After the temple, there were more stairs to get to the peak. These stairs were really big and just pieces of wood on the edge with dirt where you step. Seeing as how my preggo belly was already feeling tired and sore, I decided not to continue. Claire really wanted to go further so she and Chris continued up while I sat with Maddie and gave her snacks. I was REALLY impressed that Claire was able to yet again, hike up a mountain, up a whole bunch of stairs, and do it so well. They didn't get all the way up to the top, as there was a narrow "goat trail" as Chris called it, to get to the top, and he was nervous doing that with Claire. Either way, it was some great daddy/ daughter time. :)

One the walk back down, towards the end of our hike, we saw some cute little chairs, plastic animals, etc. that we looked at. It was fun to check it out before we went back to the car. :)

Claire sat on every single animal there...

...including this squirrel thing. Haha.

A cute little family of chairs.

Cool egg, stone sculpture thingy.

Despite the fact that hiking itself is exercise, you'll always find these little exercise machines on hiking trails as well as by the track by our house. Claire finds them quite fun.

We had a wonderful time on our hike and actually spent longer doing it than we initially intended. We just love our family time together!