Camping at Riverhills in Gangwon Province.

Pre Travel Expectation:
CAMPING !!!Trip

About the Place: The Location is Suju in Gangwondo province. Gangwondo is always an exciting name for people who loves to travel and be close to nature. Every time we visited Gangwondo province, we forgot our busy life and always got into a nature appreciation mood.
Check the website for the Riverhills camping area and register before going there.

To book a spot in this Camping area, do the following.
1. From the website URL below, check for the availibilty of spot on the day you want to do Camping.
There is no need to register or login to this site.
http://www.riverhills.kr/default/app/app_online.php?topmenu=5
2. Click on that Date and few more clicks on next few pages and 1st step of your Site booking is done.
3. One you recieve SMS, transfer the booking amount to the account number mentioned in the SMS.
4. Call the Owner and cross check whether the reservation was done.

Camping Anxiety: We tried to find from net what all places are available for camping and then zeroed in to the Camping ground in Suju.
The one thing that bothered us most during pre travel time was weather."How the weather would be? Will it rain???." Weather forecast consistently showed rain forecast. We were extra cautious about the consequence of bad weather since we had 3 kids in our team, Nidhi being the youngest(11 months).
Backup For Bad Weather: After a lot of brainstorming we finally decided to reserve a Condominium as a back up. If the weather is too bad or rains heavily, we would go back to the condo. If weather is good we will visit the condo on our way back and pay the rent.

Twist1: We tried to reserve a condo but due to some last minute problem we could not reserve it.
Agian brain storming for some time wether to go ahead or cancel. Nevertheless we decided to go ahead with our plan and this time with a new back up plan. "Pack everything and return home if wheather gets wild"

The Journey:
On 28th of august 4 families started at around 10am from Suwon.
Twist 2: Early morning obstacles popped up. 2 of the Navigations stopped working.On same day, 2 of them down.. what a coincidence). We put an attempt to fix them and after an hr of experiments, 1 came back to life. Without trying more we started our journey.Naveen following our Car without navigation. Well he was the natural choice being highly skilled in driving without Navi.

On the way taking rest at Yeoju Rest Area. The place from where things slowly started to fall in place The weather got sunny and the traffic showed imrprovement as soon as we left yeoju.

At Yeoju rest area.

Beautiful sceneries on the way

Olle look!!! The Camping Site Welcome board on Entrance.
Riverhills camping site. We finally reached the camping site at around 2 pm, it started to drizzle again. We rentend an extra tent since we did not have confidence in our tents because of rain prediction. The Camping place donot rent tents but there were two tents used by the Site maintaners, and they were kind enough to rent one of them to us. The availability of a new strong tent acted as boost to our confidence and we started to set up for the lunch.

Near the entrance to the camping site.

Kumar with the manager of this camping site.

Cooking rice for the lunch.

Had a yummy lunch with rice and Rajma curry.

There were lots of other campers in that place. So many beutiful tent of various design and size. It was quite big camping ground.

By evening slowly the drizzling stopped and we got the confidence to open our tents and put them .

Naveen and Jagdeesh roasting corns and sweet potatoes.

Relaxing time beside the river.

We roasted almost all kinds of vegetables. Everything tasted great in that atmosphere.
Our tents all set . Now time to sleep.

The night spent successfully inside the tents and hooray no rains!!!!

There was a big bathroom and shower rooms where we refreshed ourselves in the morning.




The bathrooms and the shower rooms.

The shop where you get all necessary items like charcoal,gas, noodles, snacks, beer etcetc).

The washing area near our tent.

Deepa busy making yummy sabzi for morning.

Chandra, Suma,Deepa and Nishi Cooking puris .

It was a great fun having breakfast early morning near the river. Nishi usually eats two plate full in breakfast..Hehehe Kidding...Hope Nishi is not reading this...OKOK..Suspense over.....She is just holding Naveen's plate while he takes the Picture.

Spent a great time and had unique experience since this was our first full night camping.We had earlier done a few semi campings (Semi=Returned at late night and did not sleep there in tent). On our way back home, thunder showers and heavy rains greeted us and all of us were thanking god silently for holding these heavy thunder storms till we had packed up. Else it would be completely different story.

Hope to go more camping trips and more well equipped next time.

2 Day Trip to Yongwol

This time we visited Yongwol.Yeongwol is a region of culture and fidelity with beautiful natural resources and cultural remains. It's located in southern Gangwon-do, the middle inland of the Korean peninsula.Its around 190 km from Seoul.
We reserved a pension in Yongwol.This is the pension Home page(Pension).
The pension location is really good.Its located inside lush green mountains and a nice stream just next to the pension makes it a really nice place to spend some leisure time in summer.

Kunjal Showing the Magical Water tap. Continious water falling from the Tap.

In front of Yeoju Rest Area .

On the Way.Partha took this photo from Nilanjan's car moving ahead of us.

After reaching pension we went for sight seeing. Our destination was to visit the cliff at seongnam village which is shaped as korean peninsula.

On our way to visit the cliff shaped as the korean penisula.

The cliff as seen from the hilltop . Photo point was full with excited tourists like us.

fathers with kids.

In front of our pension on saturday just before leaving .

All happy faces.

our gang before leaving the pension.

Posing infront of the Pension

At the gossi cave area. Behind is the African art museum which we couldnot visit this time.

Gossi Caves: We reached Gossi cave area at around 12.30pm and enquired about tickets immidiately.But due to huge rush we were asked to enter the cave only after 3.15pm.Kids below 7 are not allowed in the caves.
Just beside the Gossi caves was the spot for River Rafting. From our team those interested in rafting moved towards the Rafting area. We also opted for Rafting..

The Entrance to Gossi Caves

The narrow entrance to the cave.

the lime deposites inside the caves.

River Rafting: The course that we had choosen was 1.5hrs long and was a beginners course and did not have big challenges. Even small kids can join this one.There are many Rafting spots of different adventure level in Yongwol.Our starting point was just beside the Gossi Caves.It was good because we could enjoy two attractions in the same place.This is the Rafting company's website (Rafting Home Page) The site is in Korean. In peak season it is better to go there after advance booking.The fee for rafting is 25000won/person


Photo session before departing....

As a warm up step we had to carry the boat ourselve till the stream.Its quite heavy...but all smiles.....waiting for the fun ahead...

It was lots of fun

All eating rasgullas before starting back for home.

Thanks to all our friends and a natural place like this we had a great weekend.

Request: If you liked this place and went there then please send a 10 line summary of your trip and 2 photos. We would feel priviledged to add it in our blog"

Visit to mangol Park in Yongin

This weekend on 15th we had been to a park in Yongin. Its not far from suwon .This park is great for kids as there is a huge network of slides for kids of all ages to play. The water fountains are a treat to eyes . There is also a mountain beside the park for people intersted in moderate mountain walk. Location: The park is located some where near Suwon Country club. Discovery Story: Last year in Sep when we sold our old car.The car tank was full so we were roaming here and there aimlessly with the remaining petrol and we happend to notice this park.It was still under construction that time. But sadly after reaching home we could not remember where it was exactly and so could not go there again.This weekend we logged to naver.com and started to search all nearby parks in and around Suwon and luckily got the name of the park from some ones personal blog.

The map to reach the park.

At the entrance of the park. Near the fountains. Kids really enjoy getting wet. We hope to visit again when the weather gets a bit more warmer so that Kunjal can enjoy playing with the water.

Nice structures in the park.

The artificial water falls .

The slides really big.The picture here is covering only lower part of the slide.Its much longer than visible here.

Kunjal was too happy to go through this huge slide.

There are 3 of those huge slides.Kunjal having fun in each of them in turn.

A walk in the gardens of the park is quite refreshing.

Lot of equipments available for exercise in this park.

This is way to go for a mountain walk. This is not a big mountain and so its nice for a relaxing walk.We didnot go deep into it though.Next time we plan to explore more of this .

High pressure Air cleaner to help you get rid of the dusts after your mountain walk.

The park view.

Kunjal showing the play area from an elevated spot.

On the way to the mountains.

Its a good place to relax and spend some good family time and kids wont be bored for a minute. We hope to frequently visit this place since its just 8~ 10 km from ours house.