Day 2: 88 Temples - Yoshinogawa (8-10)

Sunrise was an hour earlier than we expected.  San Francisco is now at 7am but Tokushima is at 6am.  We only started getting ready after we realized it was daylight outside.  Mike had a terrible night only sleeping for an hour and a half.  He put some lineament on his legs and they set his legs on fire.  I woke a few times to hear him grunting and moaning.


Out on the road in the morning was pretty nice.  With only 3 temples we were expecting an early finish.


Walking to Temple 8 was pleasant in the cool of the morning.  We missed the turn to 8 by a block and ended up going in the route out to 9.  We saw our Atlanta friend coming down from 8 and had a brief chat.


Temple 8 was a high end temple.  Some look a lot more prosperous than others and this one was pretty nice.  A woman Henro knodded as we passed.  I had been walking around the grounds behind her.


The walk from 8 to 9 was more rural and new than most of yesterday.  The vending machine count was way down and we had fewer drinks as a result.  


Temple 9 was in flat area which is a little unusual and the area around it wasn't scenic but inside the temple walls it was quite pleasant.  I saw the woman from 8 and she said I was fast.  I think she was a driving Henro. The car route and the walking route overlap a lot but they join and split all the time.  The walking Henro have a little red route marker usually stuck the sign poles.  You get pretty good at spotting them.


Temple 10 had a pretty good climb along the road to the temple.  The after entering the grounds there were 333 stairs to get to the temple.  Everyone reaching the top sat for a minute at the benches.  I was leaving drops of sweat on the stairs.


This was our final temple of the day and we had 8 or 9 kilometers to our accommodations.  At the temple there were banners for an udon place.  We looked it up and it was on the route just a kilometer away.   We got there just at noon and after having the waiter show us how to get water out of the faucet to wash our hands, we had a nice lunch with udon and tonkatsu curry on rice.


Just after the udon place we got our first Osettai.  An old guy working on something said hello and offered us some hard, tangerine shaped orange candies.  He tried to pour out a few and then just gave us the half full bag.  He paused, a little expectantly and we gave him a white slip with our name.  This made him very happy and everyone was saying thank you.


It was hot and we crossed a river with a long, single lane bridge.  The after lunch portion of today hurt a lot more than it should have.


We went a little off route with about 2km to go to visit a 7-11.  Tomorrow has no services and has a long 12km climb in the forest so we need to carry fluids.  We also got a soft ice cone in a package that was tasty.  I also got money at the ATM.


Finally, we walked up to Ryokan Yoshino.  A hot shower, clothes washing and dinner got us back on track. I'm ready to sleep.


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