No big plans this 4th of July weekend.

We plan to stick around the house, maybe catch the fireworks at Humphries tonight & do some grocery shopping.

The commissary at Osan, a nearby Air Force base, is bigger & better than the one at Humphries. And we drive the 20-odd minutes through the back roads to get there once a week.

So I thought you’d like to tag along for the last time in our hooptie…

First, take Anjeongsunhwah-ro past the main gate at Humphries.

(Sorry, no pics of the main gate – it’s a no-no. And please note, this is the only street name we know. From here on out, we’ll be traveling by landmarks.)

Keep driving past OMG – it’s where everybody takes their cars to get fixed.

(Note the bumper sticker proudly displayed on our dirty, old hooptie and their excellent use of English punctuation.)

Be sure not to hit the Korean drivers who dart out into the road unexpectedly.

Then you make a few random turns that I can’t remember right now until you get to fields & fields of rice patties.

Keep driving – and keep trying to take snapshots above the guardrail while Eric practices his autobahn skills in the hopes we’ll get to Germany one day.

You’ll drive a good way through the fields & see all kinds of lovely purple mountains in the background.

Then you’ll come to some winding roads that lead you up & away towards an old South Korean Army defensive post.

Lots of barbed wire & a few weathered guard posts covered in camoflauge netting. Very austere.

Once you past that, it’s time for more winding roads & one last shot for Eric to practice driving really fast around blind curves.

But be sure to keep an eye open for little old Koreans who love to walk smack-dab in the middle of the road.  They appear out of nowhere & don’t really care that you’re driving on their road.

(Unfortunately I wasn’t quick enough to snap a pic of the little old Korean woman we nearly ran into last time. But did you notice the lovely cracked dashboard of our hooptie?…It adds character.)

Then before you know it, you’re right in the middle of Songtan, the ville outside the gates of Osan, & trying to figure out how to make room for two cars on a one-lane road.

In this case we had to back up…and the taxi had to back up…all for the car you can’t see that’s in front of the taxi to drive past us.

Part 2 tomorrow – navigating the streets of Songtan.

Happy 4th of July!