Younginsan Natural Forest

Today our family went on a hiking adventure close to home. We went to Younginsan Natural Forest near Asan. It was less than a 30 minute drive, the views are amazing, the colors are beautiful, and the hills are steep. There are a few different parking lots to park in. Unfortunately, we didn't go until the afternoon, resulting in all the upper parking lots being full. So...we had to park at the base of the mountain and hike all the way up. Jennifer was right. It is a long hike from the bottom. Being so long of a hike, and having such little legs, we made it up to the Forest Museum and stopped there. I would love to finish the climb to the top sometime, but those stairs seemed many and mine and Yahaira's legs were tired from our 5k run that morning.

The hike from the parking lots at the base starts out steep (and muddy on our particular day). But, the kids did great hiking it.

Once you reach the road, the trail turns into a boardwalk. You walk along it for a few kilometers until you reach the actual entrance to the park.

The leaves were beginning to change color. The views are so beautiful.

There is a fee to enter the park: 1,000 won for adults, 800 won for youth and 500 won for elementary aged kids. Kids under 6 are free.

Inside the park, there is a playground, a swimming pool (open in the summer), a tubing hill (open in the winter), bathrooms, rental cabins, an arboretum, a forest museum, a zipline (Sky Adventure), a canopy course (Forest Adventure), 2 mountain peaks and many hills to walk up and down. We only got to experience the playground, a stinky pit type bathroom on the hike to the museum, the forest museum and many hills. My daughters wanted to do the Forest Adventure, but they were too short (I think it says a minimum 130 cm height requirement...which is like 4 ft 3 inches or so). We thought about doing the Sky Adventure, but it was not running right at the time...the return machine wasn't working...but turns out the hubby could have just gone down and not back (faster way down the mountain). Both cost extra: adults are 5,000 won and 10,000 won respectively.

The paths within the park are paved and will accommodate strollers. I just don't know how much pushing up hill you will want to do. We carried our 2 year old on our back most of the time, and carried our 4 year old on the hip a little on the way back to the car. It is a lot of walking for little legs, so expect tired kids at the end of the day. That being said, there were kids everywhere! They were walking up the hill from the base parking lot like champs.

These two pictures capture the spirit of each one so well:

reserved and "by the book" and "smell the roses" unicorn princess

These are peppers that look like plastic flowers

The kids stopped to smell the many mums lining the main path:

Off to the Forest Museum!

Fall has arrived 

And here are some views from just before the Forest Museum:

The Forest Museum is pretty neat. All the detailed information is written in Korean, but the displays are large and child friendly that it doesn't really matter. There is a huge tree replica, with a glass floor over the top of the roots to illustrate different animals that call that place home. There is also a large display of the cross section of a tree's root system, showing how they go down and branch out.

It costs 2,000 won for adults to enter the museum and 1,000 won for youth and kids. The museum is open from 10am to 5pm in the winter and 10am-6pm in the summer.

Pretty displays of preserved flowers:

We got to check out the rings of trees with a giant magnifying glass:

 Some puzzle fun:

I'd love a giant globe!

 An enormous tree house!

 Then there was a place to run around, climb and slide on, kid cloud nine!

More pictures of the gorgeous views:

 

Rolling down the grassy hill

Hiking back down the hills:

 Playground: