The LBL Hike
Day Two

We got up that morning to find a large toadstoll that had come up overnight. It stood about 6 inches tall but had not spread out its umbrella yet. We had seen some with tops of about 10 inches across. Steve's dad some of the ones we saw were edible but personally I'll just stick to the morels.

We had clear skies that morning. We went up to a small work shack nearby where there was also a firetower. I'm not very good at climbing those kinds of towers (or any other kind of tower for that much as my knees begin to knock each others caps off). Steve, however, showed just how much of a manly man he was putting on his 40-pound pack and then making the trip to the top. I just stayed at the bottom and took pictures. The morning was a cool and crisp one. We hadn't slept much that night because of the coyotes serenading us. That first 11.2 miles had been a pretty good shock on our bodies too. We snacked on some breakfast bars and Steve made coffee (good ol' Folgers instant......I had to pass myself before of a caffeine thing I have...). I decided to keep the camera out of the bag today and put the zoom lens on. Of course as you would know nothing showed itself all day. I think they had somebody out there spying on me so they wouldn't get their pictures taken. And I half way expected that to happen.

Later in the day I had a problem develope on my right foot. It felt like a blister forming but something I noticed on my boot was a large dark spot even though rest of the boot had dried. At about 11 am we took a snack break and I pulled the boot off and saw the sock was all red. I knew then I had a different problem. Then I pulled the sock off and saw the whole foot was bloody. That was a bigger problem. Well....I hadn't trimmed my toenails before I left. (NOTE TO SELF: TRIM ALL TOENAILS BEFORE BIG HIKES!!) I got to looking and found that my sock had ripped my little toenail all the way back to the cuticle and blood had poured into my sock and boot. Yeah, it wasn't a pretty sight and it definitely hurt. I taped it down with a band-aid and tape and taped another toe with a missing nail from a previous problem. It wasn't going to stop me though. I thought about it getting infected but Steve put some hydrogen peroxide cream on it. Later I put some antibiotic cream on it as well. The downhills were the worse but I kept going.

The toe made me fall a little behind and I wasn't able to keep the pace I had been but it was still a nice day. Steve and his dad were clicking right along. Eventually we came to a sign that pointed us toward the shelter but we found a stream good enough to pump water from and decided to set up our tents in a field. I had chicken and noodles for supper and took it easy. I also found the toe had bled again so I put on a new dressing. We went to bed about 8:30 and it seemed the coyotes had maybe been following us. That night we heard them yelping and howling all around us and much closer. Some of them couldn't have been more than a couple hundred feet away if that much. We also had a deer drop by for a visit and I guess he didn't like us being in his field as he stomped the ground and snorted before moving on. I guess he thought we were going to get his soybeans in the field next door.