What In Blue Blazes?

What In Blue Blazes?
First,the bad news:we lost all of the first day's pictures and all of the second morning photos due to a camera snafu.Gone forever are the wonderful sunset photos of us packing up the car.Gone is the photo of us setting up our tents up in the dark(Millie's eyes shining);gone is the picture of the morning sun coming through the trees as we started out the next morning;climbing the 100 ft.high Lockington Dam;the rays of sunlight photos gleaming on us as we walked through the almost tunnel-like woods;the beautiful scenery of the corn and soybean fields during our road walks;Tyler's pop can stoves,pruney looking toes,Nik playing the harmonica;pictures of the BLUE BLAZES we followed,setting up camp and taking it down;Adam goofing around;following the Miami-Erie canal;and all so many more postcard perfect shots.But,what we do have is a nice sampling of the rest of our hike.....
...... We Started our our two day adventure Monday night planning on doing the whole 'St.Mary's' section of the Buckeye trail(BT).This section is 44 miles long,and we figured it would take us four days.It was only an hour drive to Lake Loramie State Park in Fort Loroamie,so we dropped the van off there and then we went south to Pique/Lockington to camp for the night.The BT is marked by BLUE BLAZES,so with our BT map in hand and the trail blazed before us,it was,for the most,very easy to find our way.Almost as we started,we had to climb the 100 ft.Lockington Dam.We soon came to a park that led us onto a wooded path.The path seemingly ended right at the spot that the forest ranger had told us to avoid-right into a supposedly grouchy man's property.We had to back track-find the illy marked path(complete with fallen trees)which led us onto another private property...well a corn field.This took us to the next few miles of open road walking.For the next five or so miles we followed the roads,mostly without shade... in 90 degree heat and with 30-40 lb packpacks.Tyler cooked us some Ramen noodles with his popcan stoves during a water break.We quit early at a map noted campsight[really,just a guy's front yard].Everyone had sore piggies,but Robyn's were the worst.She had six major blisters.We fixed up her feet as good as we could with antibodic cream,moleskin and corn pads.The place had shade,a place to pitch our tents and all the water we could ask for.Tyler and I cooked supper on my new Wal-Mart stove,and we played frizbee,cards,and relaxed until bed time.
The next morning we broke camp and after a half mile trek,we were back to the BT.It immediately joined the Miami-Erie canal and we had a couple of the best miles of wood hiking the whole trip.Following some easy road walking we were basically back to woods walking until we got to a campground in Newport-which we thought would have taken us alot longer to get to.Robyn's feet were mighty sore and she was getting a headache.She asked if we could hike up to the car-seven or so miles away-and then come get her.Nikolas decided to stay with her and our dog,Millie,because,I think,he didn't want to leave his Mom behind by herself.Nikolas,you are a champion.Tyler and Adam took off their packs and I emptied out mine of all but water and a few basic supplies and off we hiked.It was a fun seven or so miles.We hiked through the woods and on lonely corn walled roads and even back yards before we hit Ft.Loramie.A Mile and a half out of town and we were back to the Van.{This is where I discovered that most of our photos were somehow wiped clean}.As we drove back to where Robyn,Nikola and Millie were,the clouds began to darken.We had two broken backpack snaps(one on Nik's Jansport!),Robyn had sore feet,and it looked like we would be pitched in our single man tents all the night during the thunderstorms.We decided to call it quites-since everything was almost already in the van anyway.

It was a good decision.It rained and thunderstormed not only just all night-but all of the next day as well.Fun was had by all.And we have something to look forwards to next time.