Day 16, Leg 11

I'm at the Bobos Motel in Sangju. The room is only W45,000 a night. I have three walking days to go: a 36K ass-kicker tomorrow to the Daesun Motel, a 30K segment two days later to the Songhak Motel, then the final 27K segment to the Andong Dam on the 10th, the last day. I won't be lingering in Andong, either; I'll be grabbing a bus and heading back to Seoul right after. Had I done this walk all in one go, I might have stayed a day to savor my victory, but my month-long delay—and subsequent resumption of the walk—doesn't feel like a victory. I'd thought about dedicating this walk to Mom, but this isn't the right walk to do that. Too much dishonor.

Today's route, plotted by Naver, was somewhat new. It included some familiar elements; I'd guess that about 60-70% of the plotted path was in fact on the Four Rivers/Nakdong River trail. But a good chunk was unfamiliar to me, and the last part of the walk to the Sangju Bus Terminal neighborhood, where Bobos is, was totally new. I've had a chance, though, to see Sangju from several different angles over the years, and overall, I think it's a nice city. If Gumi is all about agriculture and livestock, Sangju is all about persimmons, especially got-gam/곶감, i.e., dried persimmons. 

Naver's plotting did cause one major problem, though. I normally plot my courses in "bike mode," which results in longer routes but more time spent alongside rivers. Walking routes are shorter but can lead you along steep mountain trails and/or high-traffic roads. Today, though, it was the bike route that was the problem: I realized too late that Naver was planning to lead me, for a short distance, onto a freeway. I've walked freeways in Korea before and have never been accosted by a cop, but road shoulders vary in width, and I just wasn't in a mood to gamble with my own safety. So for a small part of the final third of today's walk, I switched to "walk mode" to re-plot my course. Once I was safely away from the freeway, I went back to "bike mode." Luckily, I was less than 10K away from my destination when all of this went down, so Naver didn't lead me over any mountaintops or through any dangerously busy streets.

When I was almost at downtown Sangju, I took a pit stop at an athletic center to use its restroom. As I was walking back to the exit, I saw a small, gorgeous woman talking with a female front-desk staffer. She ended her conversation with the staffer right as I reached the sliding door. It was one of those push-button doors, so I hit "open" and gallantly deferred to the lady, bowing and gesturing her through. She smiled sweetly and walked out. What I remember most about her, aside from her lovely face and her "Thank you" in English, was her magnificent head of hair. It was the kind of hair you want to run your fingers through. Slowly. Probably while breathing it in. But the fantasy lasted only a second; she made her feminine way to her car, and I had to follow a different route because of Naver. Unlike the cheerfully perky chick at the Nakdan Dam yesterday, I will remember this lady's face for a while.

Swinging so far west to find a motel close to Sangju Bus Terminal actually took me away from my final goal, but I am now poised to do almost exactly the same route that I did in 2022 after I'd finished the Jeju Olle route. Last time, I arrived in Sangju late and walked barely 10K to an inn that wasn't too far away. This time, I'm doing a 36K route that skips past that inn to go straight to the Daesun Motel, which had been my Day 2 stop last time. 

Actually, this is another area where Naver is again tripping me up. When I'd originally plotted these final three days of walking, the distances were 36K, 30K, and 27K. Now, though, the same routes are showing up as 37K, 31K, and 28K. Why the additional kilometer? No idea. Not that a single kilometer will mean much in the cosmic scheme of things. 

Otherwise, today started off above freezing. An early part of the walk was in the unlighted woods and so dark that I had to use my phone's flashlight app to see the path. I got barked at by a lot of farm dogs, most of them chained up. The one unchained dog was too much of a coward to run right up to me (most farm dogs are literally all bark and no bite).

By the time I got to the Bobos Motel, I was pretty tired, but I summoned the energy to write this post. My Sky Map app is helping me appreciate how people of old might have used the stars to navigate; I've started to think of the triumvirate of Sirius, Betelgeuse, and Jupiter as my early-morning travel companions, floating there in the western sky to show me the way. It's going to be very sad to return to Seoul and all of that light pollution. 

Enjoy the day's map, stats, and photos. 

After veering so far west, I have to double back east.

about 4900 calories burned

looking back at a bridge after popping out of the dark woods

looking back at the dawn's early light

Vampire-deer roadkill. I slapped a similar image up years ago. These deer, found in East Asia, are a curious branch of the cervid evolutionary tree: they use their fangs the way other deer use their antlers: for fighting, not for sucking blood or ripping at warm flesh. On today's walk, I ended up encountering two deer carcasses. The second one wasn't a vampire deer.

Why so many unfallen persimmons in December?

Ggoggami and Ho (tiger, not whore); ggoggami is a baby-talk way of saying got-gam (dried persimmon).

persimmon lanterns

"Gyeongsang First Gate",,,?

Tomorrow is supposed to be partly sunny with a high of only 6°C (43°F). I'd better not lose any more gloves. Wish me luck.

PHOTO ESSAY

Maybe 숭조원/soong jo weon, "high ancestor's garden/courtyard"?