Namhae

After surviving the stress and bustle of the 4th of July party, we took a belated anniversary trip to Namhae, a beautiful island about 3 hours from Busan. It's quite rural and woodsy, and though there are some nice resorts, we opted to stay in a small cabin tucked away in the woods. The girls loved it, it was camping light. We slept on the floor, cooked camping food, hiked, and played in the water. We had such a fantastic time, we are all looking forward to our next opportunity to sneak away for the weekend!

Summer in Korea is gorgeous. It is rainy season, but we managed to luck out and have beautiful, beautiful weather. All the rain, though, means that Korea is green, lush, and full of flowers.

We had been told the campground had a pool; but it turned out we were there about six days prior to the official pool season starting. So we found a small stream and the girls had a blast splashing around. It reminded me a lot of my childhood playing in the stream near my house.

Next, we went to a really neat butterfly pavilion. There were tons of butterflies, and they would freely land on our clothes, and even on the girls fingers. They loved it; Emily constantly said it was just like being Fancy Nancy.

On our way back to the campground we passed this small traditional Korean house. I fell in love with it. It was in the middle of fields of rice, flowers, and had huge arbors where they were growing pumpkins.

We ate dinner camping style. Mac and cheese and watermelon. Shirtless for Maddie. Camping in style!

After dinner we went for a hike. It turned into about a kilometer straight up hill. The girls were real troopers and the view from the top was unreal. We set out no intending to hike- just a short walk, but we were all glad we pushed to the top. We fought darkness the whole way down and thankfully made it out of the thick woods just as it really got dark.

While we waited for Madeline to fall asleep the girls (and Tyler) had some fun with glow sticks. Tyler wants to point out that he did not have me rotate any pictures- he did write his words the correct way!

After a so-so night sleep we loaded up to explore the island.

We happened across this place on our way to the beach. So, so random. It looks like an old German hostel or something. Just as random as the architecture were the statues that covered the grounds, from the trojan horse to owls to pigs, it had a little of everything. So much so that it left us all scratching our heads and wondering what we had stumbled upon.

Finally we ended up at the beach. Being that it was not yet officially beach season (despite scorching weather), it was empty and we had the entire place to ourselves. Madeline has officially decided she is a beach girl and had so much fun playing.

While we were at the beach a group of older women arrived to bath in the water. They were hilarious. They all sat in the shallow water, singing songs, splashing each other, holding hands and dancing. It was quite a scene to see. This video barely does it justice. . . . Just after the camera stopped rolling one of the old ladies removed her entire top to wash it. Yup, awesome naked old lady at the beach action!

Finally, on our way off the island we stopped to show the girls some ancient dinosaur footprints that have been fossilized. Turns out the two youngest were sleeping, so Tyler and Emily made the short walk to examine the prints. Emily, our future paleontologist, loved it.