잔명 Hiking with 1000s

Yep, that's what I did this weekend. I went hiking with 1000s of middle-aged to old Koreans. My friend Laura and I decided to go hiking on Saturday since the weather was perfect and the leaves were changing. We left Daejeon for Daedunsan at 10:30 an hour later we found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam about 1 km from the base of the mountain. When we finally arrived, we grabbed a bite to eat and then headed to the cable car so that we could just hike to the peak and back down. We were surprised when we went to buy tickets only to find that the cable car was sold out until 2:45! Usually the cable car only runs every hour, but this day it was running every 5 min...and each time it carried another 50 people up! We decided we didn't want to wait that long so we just hiked up the mountain ourselves. It was a really nice hike and we were glad we decided to walk. However, several times on the way up the mountain was so crowded and congested that we had to slow up and wait in line!! Although we couldn't enjoy nature and being out of the city as much as I hoped, it was a great cultural experience. And we had a lot of fun crossing the bridge and climbing the steep ladder...it was worth the wait. After 3 hours we made it to the peak (along with about 50 other people. hehe) and enjoyed a beautiful view and the satisfaction that we had climbed the whole mountain ourselves. It's still amazing to me to think that all those people decided to spend a Saturday hiking a mountain. I don't think that would happen in the U.S. You can enjoy some pics from the day here.