Camino De Clifton Farm

(From Ed) In preparing for our Camino we decided to do a practice walk with full pack.  In July we traveled to Joan's mother's farm in Virginia and found a great place to amble through the Blue Ridge mountains.  This would give us a great opportunity to test drive our clothing, shoes, pack, etc.  It was an overcast day yet very beautiful as we traversed through the foothills on a fairly well maintained gravel road.  Pictures of our day can be found HERE.  We encountered many critters, from cows to farmhands.  What we didn't realize is that we would get to test our rain gear.  We had walked about six miles under cloudy skies but then the rain began to fall.  We walked the remaining three miles in a pretty steady shower.  We found our rain jackets and back pack covers to work quite well.  The biggest problem we had was our shoes were soaked.  Walking (or rather, squishing) was a little uncomfortable.  The bigger problem, we found, was the next day.  My shoes had dried by the next morning.  Joan's shoes were wet for the next three days.  This prompted a frantic search for a better pair of hiking shoes with less leather/nubuck and more nylon.  After trying many pairs of shoes she ended up with a pair from, of all places, LL Bean.  We have decided that on days with much rain we will probably wear our spare sandals with socks (to prevent blistering).  Anyway, the walk that day was very educational and much fun.  More to come!