Saturday walk & future plans

Today's walk was supposed to be 25K, but I'd put it at closer to 21 or 22K because JW was hungry, and he found a nearby resto on some app he was using. So we swerved away from the trail—a trail that was new to him but which he liked—and headed into Bundang before we reached the trail's official end. The restaurant JW had found wouldn't allow us to eat because I hadn't gotten a jab, so we went in search of another nearby place that, according to JW, had excellent sundubu-jjigae. This place did let us in, and the jjigae was as good as advertised, although JW felt the sides that came with the stew were not up to par. I don't have his palate, so I didn't see what was wrong with the sides, but JW is also kind of hard to please sometimes. He can be fairly high-maintenance when he wants to be.

For the walk, I took us along the new route I had discovered some months back, which followed the other side of Coal Creek (am trying Charles's nomenclature on for size). We did the entire first part of this route, plus all of the second part in the middle, but only a fraction (maybe half or a bit more) of the final third before we broke off to look for food. At the restaurant, I ate my stew and was pleasantly full by the end.

It was a bright, beautiful day, and while there weren't many people out, the path was far from empty. A lot of other people had probably had the same idea of "starting the year off right" with a nice walk along the creekside path. JW said he'd like to try this new path again, and I think we also found a route that runs right next to the air base on the way south to Bundang. We'll follow that route next time.

JW and I will also try out several more routes over the coming weekends, I guess. I told him about a possible creek path near Oksu Station. On Naver Map, I saw that it ran at least twenty kilometers north into the mountains before splitting. A few kilometers later, and the path split again, so we have several options to try out, and there are subway stations near the stopping points I'm envisioning. I also have a segment of the Saejae path (from the Four Rivers trail) that I'd like to get JW onto, a segment of the Nakdong River path I'd like him to do (Four Rivers again), and finally, the last segment of the Four Rivers path, going from Yangsan City down to Busan's Nakdong River Barrage. Plenty to keep us occupied through winter and into the spring, assuming we do long walks every couple of weeks.

So there's plenty to do on the walking front. I told JW I might try the Jeju Olle path in the fall, and he said he might be able to take a few days off and join me for several segments. So that's something to look forward to.