March 26

By morning, the rain had let up some. We were on the route by 6:15 and heading toward the town of Kuma. Last night when we were looking for confirmation of our lodging, we couldn’t find it. When we had booked it, we thought everything had gone thru and we would just be waiting for the address from the host. The booking was done thru Air B&B. We are hoping that it may still show up today. We decided that our first priority is to visit Temple 44 and worry about our lodging later. The trail is going to be a combination of trail hiking mixed with pavement. One warning that we have read about today’s hike is that you do not want to get caught in the woods. You should make it at least to the town of Kuma. Our hopefully reservation is past Kuma which means we need to have a steady pace today. The cherry blossoms are becoming more and more evident.

Not sure the name of this tree , but we had to stop to admire it.

As we headed off the road and into the woods. we understood better about the warning of getting thru this section during the day. It was somewhat eerie walking in the overcast weather.

We passed thru an area that had logs placed in a certain formation.

After thinking about it, we came up with the idea that these logs were being used for mushroom growing.

At a rest area, we meet Lisa from German. She is the fourth single woman that we have met. We always enjoy talking with them. She is headed to Temple 44 today as well and has lodging in Kuma.

At one point the trail was on an old road that didn’t seem to be used much.

The trail was soggy from all the rain that fell last night. We were glad that we had our umbrellas.

By noon, we had arrived to town and were headed to a convenience store, when we were stopped by a man on the street who asked us where we were going. When we told him he asked “why” We Said to buy some food and then he pointed behind us and said you should go there. It is a very nice grocery store. We turned around and agreed this is a very nice store, plus it had a bakery. The bakery also had food that you could order and eat at the counter. We each got a burger and a drink. We searched the store for some food items for tonight and tomorrow. Once we leave Kuma, we won’t find any stores for a couple of days. Tomorrow is exploring temple 45 which is an in and out route. We had planned to stay at our lodging for two days so we could hike to temple 45 without our back packs. We haven’t gotten a response so we will have to come up with a plan after Temple 44 The town of Kuma was in a festive mood. The streets were lined with artificial cherry blossoms and Japanese dolls.

It was a lot of fun to walk the streets before going to Temple 44. Temple 44 is not far from the town, but as usual there are plenty of stairs to reach it.

This is known as the Temple of Great Treasure. Hanging on both sides of the gate are huge straw sandals.

We can only imagine the work that went into making these.

There were more stairs going up to the main Hall.

This temple stands in a forest of cypress trees.

The figure with the blue cap is often seen in front of the halls. Usually there is a sign on it telling you if it is the main hall or the Daishido hall.

With the cloudy day it gave the temple a solemn feel especially with the large trees surrounding it. Still no word about our lodging tonight so we decided that we were just going to head up in the direction we think it is located and hope for the best. We know that it is near the observatory and that is in one of our guides. We head away from Kuma with several days of food and begin a climb up to the observatory and hopefully either a place to put up our tent or better yet would be the place we reserved. It is an up but it is on a paved road which makes for somewhat easier walking. As we near the top we see a welcome to pilgrims to come in and have a cup of coffee or tea. This looks promising . There is a brown building that we go to check out.

There is a man and women in the building and they welcome us in. We explain that we thought that we had booked a couple nights here, but never got a response. He looks thru his reservation book and there is no record of us. He said no worries, I have a place for you! Meanwhile they have made us tea and coffee plus some good tasting cookies. He explains that sometimes there is problem with the reservation system and since no one is staying here we can have lodging for two night. Wow, this is better that we could have imagined. The have sweet potatoes cooking on the wood stove wrapped in tin foil and give us each one. It melts in our mouth! After eating we head over to what is essentially a small house, There is a kitchen, a bedroom, a hot bath for us to take, bathroom and a dining room. We are blessed! Our host show us around and recommends that we use the heat tonight. It is going to be cold.

This is the view we saw from the observatory which is located right next to the brown building. The name of this location is Sea Above the Clouds. It may be obvious how it got that name tomorrow.

Accommodation Sea Above the Clouds

Miles Hiked 16