New hiking socks!

 Hello, everyone.

I have a new pair of hiking socks! They're Merino blend ones, and they don't turn into warm, wet sponges on my feet! (Darn Tough, I'm looking back at you here.)

These socks from Icebreaker and they're made as different socks for different feet. It should minimize the rumpling problem when hiking. 

The light gray rectangle on the top of the foot is thinner and breathes. There is some padding underfoot and at the toes, but not enough to be huge. These are ladies' quarter socks, in a summer weight. 

These socks are really comfortable so far, but we're just beginning our training for the next Camino walk and I really want to see how they work out on the 7 mile tram loop road, plus fire towers, at the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. 

There are other gray socks around the house, so I took some wool yarn and embroidered a little wine-colored granito on the outside edge of each ankle. This is my sock marking method, it keeps pairs together and keeps DH from trying to mash his feet into my littler socks. 

The need for sock marking became clear in 2015, actually, though I didn't act on it until much later. We gave our wash load of sweaty stuff to a nice man at a place we slept for him to run it through the washer. He brought the pile back later and my three identical looking pairs of Injinji gray liner socks were in balls. The next morning I was shocked--hey, the eyes weren't even open yet!--to discover that he'd apparently rolled pairs without realizing that Injinji toe socks come in left and right. I had 2 left socks in my hand. The next ball was 2 rights. It took a bit to wake up enough to cope with this! Later I put a granito of green on both halves of one pair, and red on another. I can't remember if I dotted all three pairs in different colors of yarn or decided that no-dot is also a mark. Later when my navy/white socks got mixed up with DH's black/white same-brand socks, mine got a blue dot on their ankles. Because folding laundry is so much easier when I don't need to stress out about sock matching.

Working towards Halloween

 Hello, everyone.

Halloween may be a bit different this year, but the children still enjoy dressing in costumes.

DGD expressed an interest in being Sailor Moon, an anime character in a cartoon series. The character is a schoolgirl in Japan, so her outfit is based around the typical Japanese girl's school clothes. That means a sailor (middy) blouse and a pleated skirt. 

Years ago I made a costume for DD2 of this type, but it's long gone to another relative and even if it were findable, DGD isn't the same size. So I'm doing it again.

This time I started with a purchased school girl outfit. Added a pair of red knee-high athletic socks for the "boots," and sewed a gem onto each one. (She is intended to wear the knee socks with her tennis shoes.) The sock gems can be removed later for normal wear.

That was the easy part. Next began the work on the gem for the bow, the tiara (no pictures of that yet), the ribbon choker, and so on.

The bow gem in progress. As there are a number of variations of the bow gem in various drawing of Sailor Moon, I used artistic license in designing something that has multiple colors around the central red element. A ring of the round gold beads was added after the photo. 

The back side of the bow gem, showing the pin back. The beads are sewn with Fireline 6 pound test crystal colored line. Yes, I have a fishing line cutter to cut it with, the braided nylon line will ruin your regular sewing scissors.

The ribbon choker. The ends have extender chain and a spring ring and are somewhat adjustable for size.

Many of the components are from stash: Mylar type gift wrap, round gold beads, stiff interfacing and felt, faux leather and pin back, etc. The small round gems were even in stash, though I had forgotten about them.

The larger, acrylic gems were from JoAnn's. 

The tiara is still under construction, with more of the stiff interfacing and Mylar and also some gold colored tulle, and more of the acrylic gems. Like the bow gem, there will probably be a line of gold beads around the top and bottom edges of the tiara. The plan is to have a strand of elastic to hold it in place when she wears it. 

Pilgrimage 2018 is heading out

Hello everyone.

I think it was Bilbo who is supposed to have said "It's a dangerous thing to go out your door" and then reflected on how the road goes on and on.

The Camino is like that, too. It calls, and when you have answered sometimes you discover that it has built a homing beacon into your heart.

We hope to make it to Santiago's tomb this year, and to pay respects also to Our Lady of Covadonga and at Oviedo. "God willing and the creek don't rise" as they say.

Here is my personal pack load, except for the Teva sandals, hiking poles, and electronics like this device.

Wear one, pack two, as the fellow who posted his 5 kg pack video to the Camino Forum said: 2 shirts, 2 panties, 2 sock pairs (Injinji low cut lightweight) in the pack. 1 bra in the pack. 1 fleece pullover, 1 windbreaker, 1 pair of shorts--wearing the zip off pants, 1 Icebreaker merino tank dress (splurge), 1 rain poncho. The merino Infinity Buff. The two packed shirts are 1 Icebreaker tank and 1 BCG tee, the shirt I am wearing is a long sleeved ripstop.
Dopp box has toothbrush, tiny powder, razor, ear swabs, toothpaste, hairbrush, a head band and a hair liga, and a small bottle of hair/body/clothes wash. Also a poly fast dry towel. Also the little mesh box with hiking pole tips.
The Fabulous Bag to put the pack in for the flight, a dry clothes bag for the shower, a mesh bag for dirty clothes or shopping, the bag for the sleeping bag liner.
Sleeping bag and liner.
If I remember them all correctly!
Ultreia!

Training report

Hello, everyone.

Yesterday we did our first long walk of the year: all of the Mission Hike and Bike, over to Bentsen State Park, around the road loop inside the park, and back along the Hike and Bike to the truck. We estimate it was 14 miles. The converter told us that works out to 22 or 23 kilometers, a reasonable day's walk, in just under 5 hours. Of course that was over flat territory and mostly pavement.

The feet are fine. The boots and sox worked well together.

For me, that was a pair of Injinji liner socks in the new Merrell boots that have the Megagrip soles. Tee shirt and shorts, of course.

We are refining wardrobe decisions in preparation for departure.

I think I will take my pair of zip-off pants and a pair of shorts, and the Icebreaker merino tank dress for evenings. (It's light weight and dries fast.) A total of 3 pairs of the light weight Injinji socks, two light weight low cut ones and a liner pair to wear as a regular sock pair. 3 pairs of undies. Probably 2 tank tops that can be under layers, 2 bras, 2 tees, 2 ripstop long sleeved shirts that can have their sleeves rolled up. The pink fleece, the windbreaker, the Buff or the Infinity Buff (not both) and the hat and rain poncho.

Further items haven't been settled on yet. Certainly the new sleeping bag will go, and the fabulous bag that covers the backpack on the plane, and of course the poles. The new dopp box.

New hiking socks!

Hello, everyone.

The old hiking socks, both the 4 pairs of gray liner socks that walked through Portugal and the new 3 pairs of "original weight" socks that started to walk the Camino del Norte, were feeling confining on my toes lately. Maybe they shrank--well the gray ones had been subjected to the automatic dryer at least once and probably have. Certainly the original weight new ones were making my toes noticeably wider inside the boots.

And I'd gotten some toenail stuff going on the first day of the walk from Irun. (They're growing out but they're still a wee bit weird.) I got to thinking about toes and toe boxes and socks, and realized that this pair of boots is at the upper bleeding-edge limit of the old socks' size. That number is not at the very edge of the next size up, however. This seemed like a thing to try out.

Behold the new, size Medium, Injinji socks: one liner (gray) and one "lightweight".

They have each gone for one neighborhood walk. (That's pretty much all that's happening until DH gets his foot cleared for action.) They've also gone through the washer and then been drip dried. *Always drip dry hiking socks!* The darned things shrink.

They were comfortable and didn't get all bunched up inside the boot. More information may come later, after they get more use and longer rambles under their belts.

New hiking socks!

Hello, everyone.

The Birthday Angels sent me a new pair of socks to walk in.

I had such good results walking in Injinji socks in 2015 that I'm sticking to them. They got their first walk this morning--4 miles on the Hike and Bike, with weight. They feel great!

Thank you Birthday Angels!

Socks

Hello, everyone.

I was trolling around through the photo files on the computer, moving food pictures to "cooking" and flower pictures to "flowers" and I came across one that I don't think has been discussed here: my new favorite hiking socks.

My toes have always wanted to crawl on top of each other and rub. This makes painful, hard-to-bandage blisters. But these socks, which I wore almost non-stop on the Camino Portugues, solved that.

This particular pair is the Injinji Liner sock. I was still wearing the same boots as in 2014...with new insoles...and after trying unsuccessfully to wear two pairs of socks, abandoned the outer pair and just wore these. I had 4 pair of them! They did accumulate ticky-tacky from adhesive tape on the front of the soles...it was really hot, and the adhesive tape tended to melt the glue out onto the sock. It didn't matter. These socks kept the toes from making the kinds of blisters that had been so difficult the previous year.

Of course, since then I've acquired a larger sized boot. Probably could wear the regular Injinji hiking socks now. But this year it hasn't been in the cards for us to go on the Camino again. (Wipes away a tear. Sniffs.) But soon! Soon! We hope that next year we will be able to take the pilgrimage trail again. And I intend to wear socks like these when we go.

Rabacal: a municipal albergue at the end of a forested walk

Hello, everyone.

We walked from Alviazere to Rabacal, for another 20 mile day (30 km) and arrived at the first municipal albergue we'd encountered on this trip.

The bedspreads--please note, there were actual beds! with sheets!--were purple. The wifi didn't work in the albergue, but we found it at the cafe during dinner. I was very tired, so I had the first thing on the menu that looked easy to eat. Scrambled eggs with goat cheese for the win!

The albergue was in the cultural building with a museum, but we arrived at pretty-much closing time and left long before opening time the next day. We had enjoyed comfortable walking weather and were glad to rest at the end of the day's walk.

Resting feet, dumping out rocks. Those little green ferns are stickery!

Walking path

"You are NOT lost, pilgrim!"

Shrine in honor of St. John the Baptist

A few comments on gear, now that we're home

Hello, everyone.

I found that I'd learned a lot about packing, and packing up in the morning, last year when I didn't think I was learning anything. I had certainly felt like I knew nothing at all! But this year, when we rolled out in the morning, the whole experience was better.

Last year, every time I needed the toothbrush, or the hairbrush, or to do my feet in the morning, it was an entire archeological dig to find what I needed, and then an entire project to get it all back into the pack. Usually followed by another dig and replacement session. There were morning where I just wanted to cry, it was so discouraging.

This year was different. We didn't have nearly the amount of unpacking and repacking, and we got out efficiently in the morning most of the time.

I had made a bag (8"x 8") just for medical things and secured it to the inside of the pack near the opening, so the Bufferin or the sewing kit were easy to find. The bag was mesh fabric, with a zipper closure, and had a strap with a snap to attach it near the top of the pack. There was a separate bag for bedtime supplies that came out as a whole and went back as a whole. This eventually was in another sturdy plastic store bag, but the basic system worked well.

Last year's sewing kit of a small plastic tube with thread and needles and the eyeglasses screwdriver, combined with a small scissors in its own bag, was replaced with a needle book type kit with a piece of felt to hold the needles and straight pins, a rubber band arrangement next to the needles for the screwdriver, and a card tucked behind the scissors case that held chunks of thread in various colors. The needle book worked out very well and fit nicely into a Ziplock bag for travel.

The entire shoe and sock setup was new, and the bright orange paracord laces were only the outside bit. I had new insoles in my old boots (Dr. Scholls Gel Work Insole for women) and 4 pairs of Injinji liner socks. The plan was to wear the Injinji under another sock, to prevent rubbing. That proved to take up too much space in the boot, and I ended up wearing the Injinji alone almost every day. They did wonders to prevent toe blisters. And even though I was now wearing a fairly thin hiking sock, there wasn't a lot of slipping around. The feet and the gel insole took up enough space to make it not be a problem. Next time I go shopping for hiking boots, though, I'm going to take insole and socks with me and try on the whole kit and caboodle at once in the store.

Making a shirt with a mesh back insert

I had fiddled around with scrap fabrics in my workroom and made an orange shirt with a mesh back and reflective piping. It would have been perfect, except that the thin orange fabric was moisture resistant, and so it was best suited to wearing in the evening.

The clothes rapidly ended up inside a sturdy plastic back from some store or another, and that proved to be a great idea. The clean-clothes bag could be pulled up to the top for access and then put back as a unit.

The walking sticks went, but they were never actually used for balance while walking. Instead, they were used to keep stray dogs away from our legs. One of the tiny villages outside Alviazere had 7 aggressive stray dogs in a pack, and we were very vigorous at waving the walking sticks! The dogs kept their distance. When we got to Santiago, we packed the sticks into the inside of the pack so they wouldn't be a problem walking in crowded places.

The sun hats were great, again, but by the time we came home they desperately needed a trip through the washing machine. They also provided comedy relief to people who saw us, apparently--this an unexpected bonus since we got them to keep from having sunburn on our heads.

The rain ponchos we used last year went again, but we should have sprayed them with some more water-resistance. Also, sadly, the stuff sack for mine jumped out of a pocket while we were walking through the outskirts of Coimbra, never to be seen again. (Now replaced by an orange stuff sack from shirt scraps of the nylon trilobal stuff. It's slippery. It would be a perfect stuff sack if it had a cord lock! Instead it has a slip knot on the draw string to hold the back mostly closed.)

We had no sleeping bags, having chosen to take only the Cocoon liners and a fleece to use if needed. The fleece came in handy as a second pillow if one wanted to read in bed, and after I fell and got a big bruise, as a warm cover to keep the healing going strong.

The plastic sporks came in very handy--no arguments about getting a yogurt to eat later, because the spouse was perfectly aware that, yes, we had spoons.

I used up the tiny bottle of travel laundry soap (it was a machine washing type, but if used in small doses worked fine in sinks) and ended up buying the smallest container of dish soap we could find. I could have used a partial-bar sized chunk of Zote, but didn't have one. The 10 foot piece of paracord and the clothespins came in handy. We made impromptu clotheslines inside bathrooms more than once.

We had packed warm clothes but rarely needed them. We wore tee shirts most of the time because this was the year that the Camino Portugues was hot. DH had a Duluth Trading Company Armachillo shirt that worked out very well for him. I had my old Columbia fishing shirt which was fine.

Shorts--oh the shorts. Oh, the chafing at first on the sweaty trail. Later on either the skin adapted or the heat wasn't quite as bad as the first three days of walking. I had also brought a pair of capri-length lycra type leggings. When the chafing was awful, I walked in them for a few days. It was chafing free, but had other problems. The leggings were too tight around the knee--maybe the calves were getting larger?--and made the joint sore. Eventually I tossed them. Lesson learned: be very careful about fit with the Lycra stuff.

Grijo, and a sunny day

Hello, everyone.

We left Sao Joao bright and early in a clear, hot-day's dawn. We saw an interesting little chapel on the way out.

This was before we got to the top of the long uphill climb through town and discovered what the route marks are apparently aimed at: the widest smooth sidewalk in Portugal.

We walked up and down, even on some original Roman road surface, and ended up in the Albergue de la parochial de San Salvador de Grijo. It was a short 18-20 km walk and didn't get toasty hot until I was washing our socks out. By the way, does anyone know how to get adhesive tape glue out of socks? The tape glue just melts through the tape fabric while we walk.

And with that question I think I'll close this and take a nap.

Training progress, what there is of it

Hello, everyone.

We have been quite spotty on our walks lately--waiting for insoles to arrive in the mail does that, I guess.

DH's insoles are still en route. My new ones arrived on Friday.

New insoles for boots. Also a pair of sox!

I was a little worried when I saw that they are labeled "wide" as my heel is narrow and my toes probably medium. But I pulled the old insoles out and these are the same dimensions in the length and width. Plus they have a heel cup that fits my foot.

Took a 4 mile walk yesterday with these socks and the new insoles. (That's about 6 1/2 km. for anyone counting in metric.)

Insoles in place--I had to loosen almost the entire lace on each boot to put them on.

Rose at a subdivision entrance, right by Bentsen State Park. One of the Austen rose hybrids?

Retama blossoms. This tree grows in places with lots of water and accepts a certain amount of poor drainage. I would think twice about buying any house in an area called "Retama View!"

Part of the Hike n Bike, between the bridge and Bentsen park. Road on right is W Military Highway, a trail once used by Gen. Zachary Taylor to patrol the US-Mexico border.

Silly nanny sign of the day: Bentsen State Park. It's a nature garden. It's outside. OF COURSE there are snakes in the area!

 The feet felt fine after the four miles. Next walk will be with the new insoles and the Injinji toe liner socks--which are thicker than pantyhose and I would say they do nicely as just a sock. Keeps the toes from rubbing so they don't blister in between the digits.

That next one will be a longer walk than 4 miles, as last year I didn't find out problems with my first pair of boots until we did a 10 mile walk. Four miles just isn't enough to find any problem that will develop with walking, in my opinion.

Camino de Santiago Walking Equipment: After Action Comments

Hello, everyone.

I woke up this morning before the alarm with my mind thinking about what I would say on this subject. Why disregard inspiration? The pictures of our museum visits in Madrid will still be there tomorrow. 

Some things I took and how they worked out:

My Kindle: I'm very glad I had my Kindle. Books I used on it were: airplane novels (re-read a couple I had on there by Jack Campbell;) Kelly's Guide to the Camino de Santiago (this wasn't just a map book, it had directions to the albergues in the villages and other useful information;) Gitlitz & Davidson's _The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago_ (wonderful, informative book--I bought the Kindle version because the paperback we had already purchased is too, too heavy.)  My Kindle is not the fancy Fire version with the internally lit screen. It's one of the classic models that requires external light. My son gave me a 1" long tiny flashlight which I attached to the zipper pull on the case.

Headlamp style flashlight: Not useful for me at all; shipped it home from Leon. I did see a man using it to go through his pack after bedtime once. The rustling had kept me from falling asleep right away.

Boots: I had the Merrell half-height ladies' boot, purchased at REI.com, in a half size larger than my usual tennis shoe size. I didn't realize this when I bought it, but this boot is a water-resistant style. It didn't keep out any water on the day of flooding rains. Nothing could have that wasn't a pair of fishing waders! But it did keep any moisture inside the boot with me from evaporating out. Like, say, sweat. Of course it had trouble drying out when it was soaked, but I could have helped that along if I'd had a clue. 

This was the second pair of boots. The first, in my regular tennis shoe size, gave me mauve toe on our first 10 mile training hike. But it didn't slide on my heel! This one had room in front, but it slides on my heels sometimes. Female feet, feh!

Shower sandals: I had bought a pair of cheap rubber flipflops at Wal-Mart. They are thong-style. The paint on the top surface began to peel off and stick to my foot toward the end of the trip. The thong gave me new blisters when I wore them all day long while tramping around Pamplona. If I were buying new sandals today, I'd buy a pair that doesn't have the toe strap, so I could wear them with socks. That way if things were just impossible (I am thinking of the day of floods here) I could take the boots off and hike in the sandals. When I wear rubber clogs to to gardening, if I get wet and have no socks, I get blisters. When I wear socks with the clogs, even though the socks get wet, I have no blisters. You absolutely need to have shower shoes of some kind, since you really don't want to go barefoot in the albergues. Too many feet with too many possible fungal spores! As you can tell if you stand downwind from the shelf of Botes. ;-)

Tummy meds: I took Pepto-Bismol. I also took Loperamide generic gel pills. The Pepto is my go-to answer to the bloating that turns into trouble if not attended to. You can take it when you feel the bloat starting and it will help fairly soon. The Loperamide you really need to take the night before. But how do you know in advance that you will need it? The airport in Dublin had no anti-diarrheal stuff at all in the airport shops. (This fact mystifies me still.) The Spanish pharmacies have never heard of Pepto Bismol and don't have anything similar that I was able to find. And I asked for it by the generic name: bismuth whatever-whatever. 

Pain meds: We left with 2/3 of a bottle of Bufferin. We ran out. The pharmacist had never heard of buffered aspirin. She sold us packets of Ibuprofen powder (really strong stuff!) to drink with water. Later on we got a tube of Ibuprofen gel for my sweetie's feet. This stuff is good, but they don't have it in the States. For some kind of equivalent here, you have to see a doctor and get a script. We bought Compeed while we were over there. This isn't sold at all in the US. (I have no idea why not.) It's a gel stick-on that you apply to the (unpopped) blister to protect it, make the pain go away, and help it start healing. In Spain you can get many, many sizes and shapes of Compeed. It works wonders for the top or side of the foot. Not the sole. On the sole it gets hard and is like walking on a shelf all day long. The gauze bandage with the stickum on the sides (fairly wide) that you cut to length, which was sold in the pharmacies, was good on the soles of the feet. I did cover it over with tape sometimes. (Adhesive tape) Scissors are useful and used. Take a pair that you can cut bandages with and trim toenails with. If you're taking a sewing kit, take another scissors that only cuts thread. (Unless you don't sew and don't care that you have to make three tries to cut the strand!) Speaking of sewing kits, you will be glad if you take a medium sized hand sewing needle and a bobbin of thread. You can repair your mesh laundry bag if you brought one--the mesh loves to let go at the side seams. I had a big needle but never used it. I had a screwdriver for glasses and needed it. You don't want your earpiece to fall off when you're three days from the nearest place to get a new screw.

Charmin To Go: I had about two-thirds of a roll of this on hand before we left, and I supplemented this with a three-pack of Camper's Toilet Paper from Wal-Mart. I am very glad I did. I put 2 rolls in my sweetie's pack and kept the Charmin container and the 3rd roll in mine. He sent his two rolls home in Leon. I kept mine. And since he didn't realize that it's a good thing to have, I took to saying "Charmin To Go for the win!" whenever I came out of the bathroom after needing to use it. Fellas, I gotta say this: we ladies have entirely different plumbing setups and surrounding areas, so we need to at least pat off every time we go. It's as important as being able to sit down is...though in desperate necessity we can hover, it's not fun. End of embarrassing digression. 

Socks: As I have mentioned before, socks became an issue for me. I took thick, soft, purpose-made Hiking Socks with me, and at the last minute I left home the Liner Sock pair that I had intended to pack because I was trying to get my pack weight below 20 pounds. (That is about 9.5 kilos for all you metric folk.) That weight includes the pack itself, by the way. So there I was with 4 pairs of socks, and when there was a washer and dryer to use, I used it. Mistake! All those "feels like buttah!" socks shrink like nobody's business when the hot dryer air and tumbling hit them. I should have taken 3 pairs of thin socks, most likely, and a pair or two of medium thick ones. They would have dried a lot faster (well, the thin ones would have) so I wouldn't have been all wound up on putting them in the dryer. The Altus socks I bought just before reaching Virgen del Camino are good, and I still have them. The Nike running socks that wick and are blister-resistant, that I bought at El Corte Ingles in Madrid are good and I wear them still, too. (They have separate right and left socks! And feel wrong if you put them onto the incorrect feet.) You can put a Liner sock inside of another thin sock if you need more fabric between your feet and the boot. You can't thin out a fat sock if your feet have gotten bigger than they were to start with.

Undies: I took the fancy Ex Officio panties, which are made of mesh. You don't want to sweat on your rump while hiking in these panties. They chafe. I wish I had taken my tried and true Breathe by Barely There ones--I can't even find this brand any more, but they're wonderful!--as I think they would have dried just as fast, and they aren't scratchy mesh, they're some jersey-like knit instead. Bras became an issue immediately. And I had taken two of the same model, a sturdy sports bra with Velcro-adjustable straps. The bra straps put up a territorial fight with the pack straps, hurt like the dickens, and were working on making a pressure sore on one shoulder. I had to quit wearing a bra. I can't say that "free-boobing" across Spain was the most comfortable thing I ever did. (And I'm not huge.) But I skipped the bra starting on about day 2 and didn't start wearing a bra again until we got to Santiago and I could leave the pack sitting by the bed all day long. Shipped one of them home from Leon, even. You probably want something with thin straps that won't make a miserable lump under the weight of the strap on your shoulder, but I don't know which brand or style to suggest. Anyone who has solved this issue is welcome to chime in in the comments!

Thin, lightweight, quick-dry shirts: One would have been sufficient. I had a long-sleeved "fishing shirt" that had straps to keep the sleeves rolled up and also a short sleeved one. They're not hot, really, but they don't retain any warmth at all on the cold days. And spring in the Pyrenees is not like spring in Texas. It's about 20F degrees colder! Or more. We plant our tomato sets in February in South Texas, and we don't need to put caps on them. The days are generally warm then. (Sometimes we have a late frost and cover the transplants for a night.) In May in Spain, we saw new tomato sets in the gardens and they all had clear caps on them to build a little warmth in the day and keep the frost off at night. You should probably look at the latitude of your home and compare it to the latitude of northern Spain when considering the clothing issue. I bought a fleece long-sleeved shirt in Pamplona at Caminoteca and it became my best friend for the next several days. The last week and a half or so, I didn't need it at all. But that is what happens when you walk during the change of the seasons.

You can see the pink fleece from Pamplona here. Also, the camera is hanging from my chest strap. The hat is tucked into my belt, with its stampede string looped around the strap. These are the zip-off pants. They were fine. By this time, I had begun carrying my water bottle in my waist pouch. I can't reach it when it's in the side pocket of the pack.

Jacket: I got a little don't-hit-me-green rain jacket from the clearance rack at the San Antonio REI store. My sweetie got the packs-into-its-own-pouch rain jacket from Sports Authority in the next town over from us. We layered these over our other shirts. Sometimes over more than one shirt.

You see the green jacket here, and the sticks. This was on Day One, the Route Napoleon. The pants are a pair of gray exercise tights, that got a hole in the back of the leg when I sat on the grass that day. They were PJ pants after that for a while, and then I tossed them.

Hat: I got a green hiking hat from Amazon and my sweetie picked up a bone-colored fishing hat from either Academy or Sports Authority. We wore them a lot! They had adjustable strings, so we could tuck them up under our chins against the wind snatching them, and they were squashable if we wanted to fold them or stick them into the pack.

Pilgrim water fountain at Estella. My sweetie's camera case is much smaller than mine. He's wearing a "fishing shirt" and zip-off pants and his hat.

Climbing the 12-degree slope to the top of the mesa after Burgos. The "fishing shirt" with the sleeves rolled down here, the hat, and that bright green bit is the rain jacket, tucked behind as it got too warm. Stick in carry loop on pack.

Rain poncho: We both had blue taffeta rain ponchos, the kind that have extra length to cover our packs. They have hoods with draw strings. The taffeta rustles. When I have it on, and the hood up, I can't hear anything behind me. I think this was a frustrating thing for faster walkers behind me during the early days. (I often stepped to the side at the next wide spot in the path to wave the faster ones on. It's just neighborly, after all.) I wore my hat under the hood of the poncho to keep the rain off my glasses. That worked out well.

Leaving Roncesvalles, with poncho, hat, and sticks. The monastery had a molded-concrete walk leading to the path.

Sleeping bag liner: This was useful. I didn't always tuck myself into it, because it was a bag and I had to worm myself into it after getting into the sleeping bag (which unzipped) and then straighten out the sleeping bag afterwards. But it did serve nicely as a pillow, and because it had a pillow extension at the top, it covered the pillows on-hand in albergues. I didn't sleep on the pillows without something. Often I pulled th sleeping bag up enough to cover the pillow. Then I tucked my camera and waist pouch into the foot of the bag to keep the weight of the sleeping bag from pressing on my toes. (Purple toes make you think of things like that.)

Sticks: My sticks paid for themselves the first two days. But after that, I concluded that they were too much for me to coordinate and were slowing me down. I had to find firm footing not only for my two feet but also for my two stick ends. People differ on this issue. But on the first day, buffeted by the tropical storm force cross winds on the steep downhill paths, the sticks paid for themselves. I'm glad I had them, even though they spent much of the trip in their little carry-loops on the sides of my pack.

Camera: My sweetie's camera fit into a pocket. Mine didn't. I probably should have had one like his. Mine was basically a cube shaped blob in its case. You can see it sometimes hanging from my chest strap in the pictures. 

Batteries: I brought swap batteries for our cameras (one each) and if the charge ran low in a cathedral, we swapped out to the fresh battery. We then charged the empty one that night or at the first opportunity with the 3-outlet travel plug. (I got that from Amazon for about $7. And then I wrote my initials on it.) We only carried one cell phone and its battery, in case we should fall and break a leg or something drastic like that, and we didn't use it from when we left the US to when we got back there again. And because my touch screen Storm BB kept trying to turn on inside the pack--jostled by stuff--I took the battery out of the phone and kept them together in their Ziplock bag in the bottom of the pack. After the second time I had to recharge the darned thing. I also used the travel plug to recharge the Kindle battery. I just plugged the proprietary charger into the travel plug. My sweetie had brought camera cable (the USB thingie to get the pictures out with) but we shipped that home from Leon, too.

Ziplock bags. Yes! But if you use it for your travel-soap bar, it will get worn and torn from all the opening and manipulation at the shower. So have an extra. The groceries in Spain do sell sandwich sized plastic bags, but I didn't notice whether they have waterproof closures or not.

And this post is really long, so I'll stop here for today.

Socks

Hello, everyone.

I thought I'd take a break from walking--just writing about it so much has me dreaming about it and remembering it off and on all day long--and touch on a related subject.

Socks.

Hiking socks come in lots of kinds--wool, poly, silk, cotton, blends. And it's really easy to guess wrong about which kind you will need in the end. I mean, you can read the comments and talk to people and walk around your neighborhood in them and still discover that the ones you brought aren't working out well for you.

I had thick socks with me as well as some medium thickness socks. When they came they were soft and felt great. But they weren't right for me, and even if they'd been right to start with, I mistreated them.

By the time we mailed things home, I was mailing home all of the thick socks. I didn't mail home the sort-of-thick ones, and I didn't mail home the medium thick ones. Why did I mail them home? Because I had put them throught the machine drying cycles and they shrank. I kept the medium-thick Thurlo silk blend socks, because they were the thinnest ones I had at that point.

How can socks shrink? you ask. I'm not quite sure, but it probably has to do with the special fibers that get used in hiking socks. Maybe also the way they knit them, for all I know. The ones from REI didn't stand up to the dryer, the ones from Amazon (including the Thurlo Ladies Long Distance Hikers) didn't stand up to the dryer--and I blame myself for this.

When I got home, I laundered them all one more time, using Pine Sol in the wash load, put them into a plastic sandwich bag labeled "ladies small hiking socks--do not put in dryer" and gave them to the Salvation Army. I couldn't even sleep overnight in them, they had shrunk so much.

At the end of Leon, before we hit Virgen Del Camino, we found a hiking store and I bought some new, thinner socks. They are blue, they were comfortable, and they are by Altus. I think this is the link (though the picture may be wrong, I didn't think they are that tall on the leg)
http://altus.es/CALCETIN_TREKKING_PRHU47_7650211_eng_var.aspx
and they were (I think) 10 euro. They come in sizes, too. I told the nice man my tennis shoe size in US sizes, he looked on his handy chart, and I got the size 42.

Later on, when we got to Madrid, I found another pair, even thinner, in the El Corte Ingles department store. These are Nikes, I think, and they're wicking runners' socks. The right and left are not the same. And I don't put them into the dryer!

I should have packed thin socks to start with. You can always double up thin socks if you need to. You can't put thick socks on a diet. Who knows? Maybe if I'd had a double pair of thin socks on the second day, the one with all the flooding rain, etc., there wouldn't have been so many huge blisters. It is impossible to know for sure.

I didn't want to leave the post with no pictures at all, so here is one:

Relics of St. Juan de Ortega, engineer and priest

I didn't put this picture in earlier, but I thought it was pretty neat, so here it is. This is at the monastery of San Juan de Ortega, in a kind of side chapel. St. Juan was a major force behind the road through the Montes de Oca, back in the day. As it was a graded but unpaved road (not even caliche!) there were parts of the walk after Villafranca and before San Juan de Ortega where we wondered if we were on the same muddy track as the saint had laid out. Though there are windmills in the area and it's awfully wide for a medieval road!