Hwanseon Cave

This past weekend I had a chance to visit the largest limestone cave in Korea, 환선굴 or Hwanseon Cave in English. I had wanted to go there for a while, I had seen it online and thought it looked pretty cool. The only problem is that it's in Kangwon Do, the province that's furthest north and east in Korea. The cave is only maybe 20 miles from the town of 삼척시or Samcheok which is right on the East Sea. My friend Sam has a car and he wanted to go visit as well, so we talked it over and decided to head out first thing Saturday morning. He picked me up around 8AM and we figured it would be about a 3.5 to 4 hour drive. There is a large highway (I call in the Interstate, even though since there aren't states I guess it can't be an interstate! HA) and we followed it for a few hours up to around Wonju, and then we decided to take the scenic route. On the map it looked a lot shorter cutting through (the interstate went pretty far north and then cut back down to Samcheok and the road we took looked like a straight shot to the back side of the cave) so we took the road. It was really windy, but the mountains were beautiful. When we left Cheonan at 8AM the weather was really nice and the sun was out. Kangwon Do is know for it's mountains and ski areas, so as the day went on the sky got darker and it started to snow. No big deal, since the roads were well maintained and the snow flakes weren't huge. We stopped several times and oooohed and awwwed at all the scenery and took a bunch of pictures. We had a map and as we got closer to the cave it started to snow a LOT more, and the flakes got a lot bigger. Well, as we approached the cave (well, the spot the cave was on the map anyway) we were looking for a little road that I thought would lead to the cave. We looked and the sign said Hwanseon Cave 65 km...so we were a little perplexed. Sam can speak Korean pretty well so we stopped and he asked someone at a little restaurant. Well...we were on the BACK SIDE of the mountain and the entrance was on the front side, so we had to drive all the way around the mountain. The lady told him to take the next little road and so we took a left, but there was a problem...this road was really small and had NOT been plowed or maintained at all. So, we were a little nervous but started down the road. Sam has a little sports car, no chains, no snow tires and we were on top of a mountain basically. As we started down the road we could tell it was going to be an interesting ride...the road was steep and there were plenty of switchbacks as we crept along down this little road. It was about 30-40 km of pretty much mountainous road...we were pretty nervous most of the time, but we finally made it to the main road that took us to the cave. We were pretty relieved. As I said earlier we thought it would be maybe a 3.5 to 4 hour drive, well we arrived at the cave ticket window at just after 3 PM so it had taken us 7 hours! HA! Anyway...we were glad to be there. One thing I love about Korea is that places like museums, parks, etc. are always cheap, and so it was only 4,000 Won, or about $3.25 to get a ticket for the cave. The hike up to the cave was about a kilometer, and it was pretty steep, the snow continued to fall and it was so beautiful. It wasn't really that cold so it was really actually kind of nice and peaceful. We made it up to the cave and I have to say the cave was a LOT bigger than I thought it would be. There was about a 1.5 km walk through the cave, it was really cool...they had a nice metal walkway up and down and all around the cave. I am not geologist to say the least, so I don't really know much about the rocks, etc. inside the cave, but it was really cool nonetheless. There were several places with some little streams running through the cave and I thought those were some of the coolest areas. We didn't know but the cave closed at 5:30...we were walking around and it seemed like all of a sudden we didn't hear or see many people, but I don't think either of us noticed the time. Well...an older gentleman with a flashlight was walking behind us, we just assumed he was another tourist in the cave. Well, we noticed he stayed about 20 feet behind us and just kept walking at the same pace we were...it was a little weird, so finally Sam asked him if it was time to go and he politely said yes, that the cave closed at 5:30. We had to sort of rush the last 15 minutes, but by that time we had seen most of the cave and were content with going. It was really cool as we went to exit the cave it was still snowing and looking out of the cave and down into the snow covered valley below it was really beautiful. We hiked back down and were pretty hungry so we drove to Tonghae, a little town on the East Sea and the name literally means "east sea", and had a delicious supper. We laughed about going back the same way and back up that snow covered mountain, but decided it was a lot wiser to take the interstate back. It snowed a little more, but as we left Kangwon Do and got closer to Seoul the snow stopped and the moon came out. It was a really fun trip!