The latter half of our second day on the trail, and most of our third day are kind of light on photos. There is a good reason for that...
Over the course of our trip, I gradually sustained an upper calf injury with sharp pain radiating to the outside of my left knee. The was something quite new to me, as I have never experienced anything like that before in my life. The second half of day two became an exercise in mental pain management. As a result, we decided to cut our third day short and hike out through the valley rather than go up and over some of the other presidential peaks as we had planned.
Once down to the car, I took off my shoes and put on my thin minimalist sandals that I had worn on the card drive down to New Hampshire. I was shocked to discover that my feet immediately felt the sensation as if they had been walking off-kilter for the entire weekend. As if the footbed of my shoes had been canted - higher on the instep than on the outside of my foot. My suspicion now is that the reason for my calf injury was due to this unevenness of the soles while under the load of a pack over many miles.
I had assumed that these shoes would still be in decent shape, as I had finished the AT with them and hadn't experienced any problems. I guess I was wrong.
It was an incredibly frustrating (and painful) experience for me, as the rest of my boy felt fabulous and wanted to go, while my calf and knee said otherwise. I am going to need to figure out a new footwear strategy for our upcoming backpacking trips in Montana and Wyoming in a couple weeks.