Day 22, Leg 17

After a decent night's sleep in this ratty motel, the Jeok Gyo Jang, I've got my brain back, and I'm feeling more or less coherent. 

A remark on ambiance:  the accent in these parts takes some getting used to.  Whenever I talk to someone about crossing the country, he or she will inevitably ask, "By walking?"  The question is phrased "걸어서요?" but comes out sounding like "그르스이?"  That's part of the charm of the south, I guess.

So:  42K done.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and when I wrote last night that my feet were screaming, well, that's something that normally happens after I stop walking.  My pain levels during yesterday's trek were easily manageable despite an increasing number of sources of pain.  We can add nerve twinges and sharp flareups from pressure on the balls of my feet to the list of sources.  My soles hurt all over.  It doesn't help that my few hours' wearing those Costco orthotics rubbed my left heel raw enough for yet another blister to form, so that's been dogging me the past few days.  

Pain notwithstanding, what made yesterday's 42K better than the previous 44K segment?  As I'd speculated, familiarity was a huge factor.  Revisiting a familiar part of the path was like meeting up with an old friend again.  The 44K path was 99% new to me, with only one tiny strip veering close to the path I knew.  I also have to credit the meds with yesterday's agreeableness:  I've run out of the regular stuff, so all I have left is the good stuff, i.e., my 400-mg tablets of ibuprofen.  The weather was also gorgeous all of yesterday, which helped keep the walk pleasant.  I'd love to take the macho route and suggest that the 44K somehow toughened me up for this 42K leg, but my body was a blubbery, blubbering mess by the end of that first super-long leg.  No:  yesterday went well thanks to familiarity, meds, and good weather. 

I had forgotten that yesterday's leg took me by Mushim-sa, the temple located on that steep, steep incline.  Somehow, I'd figured that the temple would be a leg or two later.  Not that it would have mattered:  like last year, Naver routed me around the mountain that the temple is on, and I could use my newly learned vocabulary to know that, every time I saw a sign saying I was on the 우회로, I was on the right track.  Doing the Mushim-sa hill once in 2017 was enough, thanks.  No need to experience that monster again.  So I followed the detour, this time in pleasant weather instead in rain and mud.  It was good to be able to see where I was going instead of constantly worrying that the muddy farm roads were going to suck the shoes right off my feet.  

The detour ended right at the next dam, Hapcheon-Changnyeong-bo (합천창녕보... say that ten times fast).  I thought I remembered that the dam had a convenience store, so I was thoroughly demoralized when I didn't find one.  The usual flatbed-truck driver for the Jeok Gyo Jang Motel was parked at the dam; he called out to ask whether I needed a ride.  I told him I was headed to Jeok Gyo Jang, but that I'd be walking.  I asked him about the convenience-store thing; he flatly said there wasn't one.  "But there used to be," I said petulantly.  "Guess it went under," he laughingly replied.

The dam was exactly ten kilometers from the motel, so instead of resting and chomping on some convenience-store snacks, as I'd hoped to be doing, I simply began walking the final ten. 

The sun went down as I walked, and since I was in a valley, sunset came early.  There were plenty of farms and rice fields, plus a few "cow towns" scattered across the landscape, i.e., huge, roofed shelters under which the kine could congregate and engage in their extreme-mooing competitions ("How Low Can You Low?").  The Korean cattle industry is minuscule compared to what we have in the States, but Koreans are justifiably proud of the quality of the beef they produce.

The final five kilometers were walked in darkness, but as I've noted before, it's never completely dark here (I've found this to be true while hiking in the US as well).  Eventually, I reached my destination town by about 6:40 p.m.  Having started out from the edge of Daegu (Weonang Parkjang yeogwan) at 6:10 a.m., I was surprised to be moving this fast.  12.5 hours for 42 kilometers comes out to about 3.3-ish km/h.  I should note that the meds made it unnecessary for me to do my usual three long naps throughout the day:  I took only one nap.  That undoubtedly helped my time. 

So what comes next?  I have seven calendar days left to this trek, only five of which are walking days.  Tomorrow, I'll be eager to make the hilly hike to Namji-eup, where I'll sit down to a box of my absolutely favorite Nae Nae (네네치킨) fried-chicken tenders.  Instead of staying at the CF Motel like the last two times, I'm going to move over to the Heitz on the assumption that I'll have access to powerful WiFi.  My phone's memory probably doesn't have enough room to take many more pictures, so I need to upload nearly a thousand photos to Google Drive and then delete those pics from local storage. 

Once I'm at Namji-eup, I'll do another two-night stay.  After that, I walk 30K to Hanam-eup (not to be confused with Hanam-si right next to Seoul) to stay in that cheap, filthy yeogwan, the Haegeumjang.  The two walks after that (to the Nakdongjang Motel in Miryang and to Yangsan City respectively) are both short at around 20K.  The final walk, to the Nakdong River estuary and barrage in Busan, will be almost 29K, but it'll go by in a quick, happy daze if previous walks are any indication.  If I visit Slice of Life Pizza again for a triumphal meal, I might try ordering a half-and-half this time around.  I know I won't be staying at the overpriced Hound Hotel:  when a single mosquito can ruin your night at an expensive hotel, as happened last year, it's better just to find cheap lodgings.  I'll stay at the Busaninn as I did in 2017.  It's right next to the train station, anyway, so that makes it convenient for when it's time to board the KTX back to Seoul. 

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.  I still have five more walking days.  And I've had it relatively easy up to now: two of the next five walking days feature some nasty hills.  Thankfully, the hills are both doable in under an hour, so the ordeals won't last that long, but the hills are steep enough to loom large in my consciousness.  Wish me luck.  In a sense, yesterday's walk was a kind of preparation for the upcoming hills:  I'd forgotten that part of yesterday's leg included a whole series of small-but-steep hills, each of which took about a minute to climb and left me breathing hard.  I could use a mountain like that near where I live in Seoul.  Alas, all I have is Daemosan, which has one gigantic stairway, like that one side of Namsan.

Tomorrow's hike to Namji-eup is the final hike over 30K in length.  The next leg, to Hanam-eup, is the final hike reaching exactly 30K.  The three remaining legs are therefore all easy, being about 20K, 20K, and 29K respectively.  The expression "It's all downhill from here" has never been more relevant. 

Because I'm on bad WiFi, I'm afraid I once again won't be uploading many pics today.  I'll make it up for you with an enormous photo essay once I'm back in Seoul.

My beard is thick enough to have dandruff.  Disgusting.

There seem to be a lot of perfect fishing spots along the Nakdong River:

Is this an oak? 

Ads for my motel showed up early and often:

I could swear this got re-roofed:

One lone parasol:

Probably the only half-decent shot of cows this whole trip.  The beasts are normally in shadow, and they're already colored brown, so they don't show up well when I try to take pictures of them:

A Korean "vampire deer" carcass:

According to Wikipedia, these deer are found in China and Korea.  They spring from an evolutionary branch of cervids that grew tusks instead of antlers for combat. 

A lot of burial plots when you're in the hinterlands:

Styrofoam... or giant 순두부?

I took the left fork, which was a longer route, but completely flat.  The way past the temple is a via dolorosa:

Hapcheon-Changnyeong Dam:

I must have photographed nearly twenty such gloves yesterday.  It was nuts:

The camera brightens everything, but this final shot was taken after sunset, with about five kilometers to go before my motel: