Day 18 bonus pics

There's a new Holly's Coffee next door to the Lee Motel, so I went there for lunch today, although not with very high expectations.  The quality of meal and dessert items in Korean coffee shops varies widely and wildly.  The Tom & Tom's chain has some decent main-meal fare; there's a coffee shop in Itaewon that has some surprisingly good dessert items as well as better-than-average hot chocolate.  I'm not sure I'd ever tried Holly's before today, so I was curious to see what I might be able to get for lunch.  I settled on a hot sandwich with breakfast ingredients (bacon, cheese, potato wedges) on ciabatta; I also got a creamy chicken risotto.  Both items turned out to be a sad joke.  I didn't even bother to photograph the sandwich, which was on what might best be described as a travesty of ciabatta.  I did snap a pic of the so-called risotto, which was almost laughably lame. 

After lunch, I walked over to Chilgok Dam and finally decided to tromp up the nearby hill to take a closer look at a pagoda-like structure that I'd only ever seen from a distance my two previous times in this area.  It was a short-but-steep walk up to the top of the hill, but I'm glad I did it.  I'm still not sure what the structure is for, aside from being a lookout tower.  I wondered whether the platform was Buddhist in some way; there were lotus-flower images painted on the wood.  In the end, though, I didn't see enough specifically Buddhist iconography to convince me this was a Buddhist structure.  Instead, there were other, more generically East Asian images like cranes and dragons.  The platform had a Chinese inscription on its front; if I can decode that, I might be able to figure out the tower's function. 

I gingerly made my way back down the hill and to my motel room, and while watching a bit of YouTube, I repaired my torn pants pocket using a sewing kit I'd bought at the local GS25 convenience store.  I'm no seamstress (my mother used to make dresses and do alterations before she went to work for NALC, the evil union for America's postal workers), but I think my repair ought to last me the rest of this walk.  Once I'm back in Seoul, I'll have a pro do a real repair. 

Here's a bunch of pics from today.

Holly's Coffee, which wasn't here last year:

An insult to risotto.  Note the dried rice around the edge.  Ridiculous.  Preposterous.  Outrageous.

Chilgok Dam, with its name in the foreground:

Looking upriver:

Looking downriver:

Dam pedestrians having a dam good time:

Looking back at what is presumably the dam's admin building:

At least you can tell which way the river flows:

I always found the crescent-moon imagery rather Muslim:

Another dam photo:

I could stare at this all day:

At this point, I'm starting up the hill on the opposite side of the dam, determined to find out more about that pagoda-like structure:

I seem to have an impressively sized fist in the pic below, but it's just my cell phone making my hand look square:

A view of the dam from an observation deck (전망대) about halfway up the hill:

The climb is steep but short. This is just a hill, not anyone's idea of a mountain:

The rail bridge that runs by the dam. I saw quite a few KTX trains blast by while I was doing my reconnoiter:

Civilization, from a distance:

The dam, from even higher up:

The goal is in sight:

Now they warn us the path can be slippery:

A look back down the potentially slippery path:

I saw these columns and heard Darth Vader's voice rumbling in my head: You cannot hide forever, Luke.

First lame attempt at capturing a good chunk of the structure:

The sign:

A glance downhill in a different direction:

Full frontal:

The stairs to glory, and the currently indecipherable Chinese inscription:

Another look downhill:

And another:

There were many trees around the structure, but this one caught my eye for whatever reason:

The sign below enjoins you to remove your shoes before stepping onto the platform, but of the several tourists I saw, I was the only one to follow the directive.  And keep in mind that, in my current state, taking off and putting on shoes are painful acts:

My first interior shot focused too much on bright areas, which made darker areas even more shadowy:

By not focusing on areas bathed in sunlight, I could get my stupid phone camera to register the structure's interior:

There's not much here in terms of Buddhist imagery, but I like the artwork all the same:

Some birdy-bird.  A crane? 

Dragon:

A look out at the panorama:

The dam again:

Yours truly, trying to protect the delicate skin of his nose with a bandage. What sort of SPF do bandages have?

The stones in front of the structure's entrance:

When I finally started walking back down, I saw a raised area that looked less slippery than the standard dirt path, so I took it:

At the bottom of the hill, I saw this sign, which talked about a "mountain fortress" (산성, sanseong).  That couldn't be what that structure was, right?  Korean mountain fortresses are normally made of native stone. 

Choices, choices:

More signs:

I point with my trekking pole back up at the pagoda-like structure, now less mysterious than it had been:

Below, the entrance to the Lee Motel, and a sign showing the new, cheap hourly and nightly rates.  As you might guess, hourly rates are for horny couples needing time for a quickie.

Not a great repair job, but it'll hold until October 26, I think:

The sewing kit that saved my ass:

Weird to end with a pic of a sewing kit, but that's life sometimes.  Anyway, it was a good little excursion up the local hill.  I needed the exercise, however painful it might be to move around.  Sometimes, not moving is worse.  Tomorrow, it's 31K to Daegu and the humorously named Motel Boom (I guess that's the sound and feel of an explosive orgasm).  I'm there for a night, then it's about 25K to the Weonang Parkjang yeogwan at the southern edge of Daegu.  After that, I have my 42K slice of hell to deal with, but I'll again be resting for two nights.  Next is a 33K slog to Namji-eup, which signals the end of all legs over 30K in length.  I'm going to cheat by looking at last year's blog to see what terrain I'll be facing, and when.  After Namji-eup, it's only a few days to the end of this year's walk.  Almost literally, it'll be all downhill from there. 

Up at 5 a.m. tomorrow.  Off to bed.