Day 31: 88 Temples (none) - Kumakogen

This morning we repeated yesterday's start.  Breakfast, Family Mart, latte, bus.  At the bus stop I thought a woman waiting with us was also a Henro but she was visiting her son who was going to high school at the end of the line.

I think the kids on the bus were the same as yesterday.  We got off at the same stop but were headed up the mountain this time.

The weather report was not as favorable as yesterday and we expected rain.  It was also a little cooler.

The first 7km was a walk along a road with a sidewalk that followed a good sized river.  One thing that amazes me coming from a near desert is the constant sound of flowing water here.

We then took a smaller road with less traffic that followed a stream.  The weather was holding and we were even thinking we might miss the rain.  The road got steeper.  Eventually we turned of to a trail for the final push to the first pass.  We came out to a road, took a break and ate our onigiri.  Just as we started walking we felt the first drops.

We decended for a bit before starting to climb again.  By this time there was light rain.  It was like this most of the way to the hotel.  The climb was on a trail but it was only about 2 kilometers.  After that we had another 2km descent to Kumakogen.

We were wet but not really soaked.  We got to the hotel about 2pm - too early for check in - and left my pack there.  We wanted to get a bowl of noodles but all the restaurants were closed.  In fact every place you could sit down and be warm and dry was closed. As we walked up the main street a deluge came down and soaked us.  Suddenly we were cold and wet.  We went to a Lawson but there was no place inside to sit.  We did go into the bus terminal, which was nice and warm, under the pretense of looking at the bus schedules to the temples.  The good news is there are buses running along the road to our temples tomorrow.

We decided it was close enough to 3pm to try to check in.  A very nice woman checked us in and got very excited when she saw Mike's Canadian passport. Her daughter will be going to school in Canada next year.  We asked where and she said Toronto University.  We told her we both went there and that my son goes there now.  I told my son he may be contacted by a random girl from Shikoku.

Dinner at the hotel was good and as we finished Lin and Michelle were leaving the dining room.  We ended up having a long chat at our table.