February 21, A Long Walk And a Historic Site

A Long Walk Near Our House
On the 21st, we went for a very long walk near our house.  Below are some pictures we took along the way.  We live not too far from a river and a public park on the grounds of an ancient fort.

Leaving Our Neighborhood  

That's a nursery school straight ahead.  We begin by traveling north.

A Farm and The River

When we took the pictures of the river, we were standing on a little clearing on the side of the road.   The construction companies for the base expansion were using the lot to store drainage culverts and people had also been using the site as a place to dump trash.  Trash and littering are a problem here.  The communities haven't yet gotten to the place where they have enough pride in their surroundings to keep the areas litter free.  I don't think there are steep fines for littering.  I don't see any road crews picking up the litter, and the litter just stays where it is deposited.   While we headed back to the road, we were surprised to see bee keeping hives.  At first glance, I thought they were more trash, but at closer look the area around the hives was swarming with bees.  I thought bees hibernated in the winter and would not be active.  I was evidently mistaken.  We decided to take a detour around the hives as we returned to the road.

 

A Nearby Village

We next walked through a nearby farming village.  

 

These look like squirrel nests but they are actually Magpie nests!

 

Rice Paddies Near the Base Construction Project

 

In the blow picture you see a narrow road.  This is a rice paddy road that gives the farmer access to the fields.  People sometimes drive on the rice paddy roads.  A friend of mine drove down a rice paddy road.  The road got narrower and narrower.  She decided to turn around and ended up with with half of her car in the rice paddy.  Luckily the tow truck bill was not too costly.

Back On the Main Road

We have now traveled in a semicircle and are back on the main road, the road we started on.  We are a bit south of our house by now.  Once we passed the rice paddies, we came up behind an apartment complex where we saw a young American girl and her dad out bike riding.  I wish I had taken a picture of them!

The Historic Park

After getting back on the main road, we continued south and east to a park that surrounds the foundation of an ancient fort castle.  When we think of castles, I believe that Americans mostly think about Europe.  But I've been told that Korea as a country with many castles. 

 

  

The next few pictures are of the fort.

 

I lost my Anjeung-ri tourist map and don't remember the names of the park, fortress and statue.  The below pictures are of the statue and the carvings at the base of the statue.