Volcanic lava caves

Quite a few years back, I blogged about the Mark Twain Caves in Hannibal, MO. They're the cave system I'm most familiar with, having grown up in that region and visited several times. The cave system is full of twisty passages, narrow passages and wider chambers, rough terrain, elevation changes, and so on. Very much like the maze dungeon I was defending in that post seven years back.

My family spent the 4th of July weekend visiting Jeju Island. Obviously the 4th isn't a holiday in South Korea, but I'm on summer vacation and we took the boys out of school for a couple days to avoid the vacation rush. For some stupid reason, South Korea has decided that the final week of July/first week of August is when EVERYONE in the nation should take their summer vacation. We got lucky that a typhoon that had been headed our way veered off to Kyushu. Got a little rain, but not too bad. 

Anyway, one of the things I was most interested in seeing was a place called Manjanggul Cave. It's a lava tube cave, created by a series of volcanic eruptions. 

The cave entrance (and my boys' heads)

And it's pretty much just one long snaking tunnel. It was wide, around 30-40' for most of the length. There was a stretch where it narrowed to I'd guess 10-12' for a bit, and a few places where rocks blocked parts of the main floor. The ceiling was also high, usually around 40' or so, I'd guess. The floor was rough and pitted, with pools of standing water common, but it was generally fairly easy to walk. When we got to the end of the tour area (after about 1km walk), the boys sped back to the entrance while my wife and I took our time. They say they didn't fall while doing this, and Stevie, my younger, is pretty careless. If he could hustle through the caves, it's not so bad.

As you can see, there are lights every 15' or so, staggered left and right, so each light on a side is around 30' apart. And they used colored lights for effect.

Not as claustrophobia-inducing as the Mark Twain Caves. Well, I say that as someone without claustrophobia. So I could be wrong on that. But it's much roomier than MTC. 

Anyway, this cave is just one big long snaking tunnel, like what might be left behind by a purple worm.

The map

No defense of dungeon mapping in this post, but thought I'd share the cool caves I "explored" on the trip. Aside from the cave, we did some fun stuff for the boys, like go-kart riding, a maze experience zone (that was a workout!), and did some archery! 

The boys had shot my old recurve bow when they were in the U.S. a few years ago, but I'd never had any proper instruction in archery. The guy at the archery range spoke perfect English (he'd lived in Singapore and California), and was a really nice guy. Since he wasn't busy, he let us shoot a few extra rounds for free, and gifted Stevie with some 8-bit glasses as a prize for hitting a bullseye in one of the rounds. He taught us a hybrid of traditional Korean and Olympic style archery, and we all did fairly well with it. Flynn, my older boy, did the best, but that's not surprising as he's always taken to any sort of sport quickly (unlike his old man).

The archery range is the one thing both boys agreed they'd like to return to the next time we visit Jeju.

Also, in ALMOST game-related stuff, the view from our hotel room included this place.

Unfortunately, I was correct in assuming it actually had nothing to do with D&D.