April 23rd. We woke early but were a little slow in getting started. Luckily Iyadani ji (no.71) was only 5 minutes away and made a good start to the day. We always felt better when we could get somewhere under our own steam. So off we went up the hill,I don't know why but a lot of the temples are on the top of hills and/or have a lot of steps!!We said our prayers and left our name cards.
We walked to Mandara ji (no.72), Shusshaka ji (no.73), Koyama ji (no.74), Zentsu ji (no.75), Konzo jo (no.76) and Doryu ji (no.77), about 12 kms in all. After Doryu ji we decided to take the train to Marugame and find somewhere to camp there. We got in before dark and went to the tourist info office. When we tried to explain what we wanted,we got a better reaction then in previous times. The lady didn't say that we couldn't camp anywhere in the town, which is the reaction we had experienced before. She gave us a map and pointed us in the direction of a park.
We got to the park and were underwhelmed, it was surrounded by a road and 4 storey buildings. Unfortunately nothing else was immediately obvious on the map and we were tired. We sat down to wait for it to get dark before we put up the tent.
In the corner of the park was a stone tower construction, sat up here were some school girls. When they came down they had another henro with them, also trying to find a place to stay. They took him off to a better "park". We elected to stay put and set up the tent on the stone tower, figuring that it would be safer as we would be out of sight of the casual observer. Betsy then cooked us spaghetti on her trusty stove. We had some visitors in the early evening, we think that the tower is a make out spot and a couple of couples had to find somewhere else to cuddle up. We were in our sleeping bags at about 8pm and since the other henro hadn't returned, presumed that he had found a good place to stay. Later I heard a noise outside of the tent but didn't bother to investigate.It was a cold night and I was happy in my sleeping bag.
When we woke in the morning it was to see that the henro had returned and had set up in the opposite corner of the tower to us. But he didn't have a tent, just a down sleeping bag, which I envied. We got working on packing up the tent and the other henro got started on waking up, he was having a tough time of it!!
We walked to Gosho ji (no.78) and Tenno ji (no.79) and started to feel a sense of accomplishment. The end was really in sight. We took a train to Kokubun ji (no.80) and were on the home run.It was also a good day for settai,which always cheered me up.From Kokubun ji we got a ride Shiromine ji (no.81), then another ride to Negoro ji (no.82) and Ichinomiya ji (83). That night we were lucky to find another onsen and then we camped by a river, it was a vast improvement on the previous night. We were also excited that the next day April 25th, might see the pilgrimage finished. It was a weird feeling.