I woke up early, wondering if I'd be rerouted around the prescribed burn a few miles south.  Though it had been scheduled for earlier in the week, the smoke plume was clearly not dissipating.  Throwing a bunch of athletic tape over the weird folded blister under my foot (certainly due to my hammered toe and amazing bunion combo), I stumbled out, packed up and made breakfast.  The smoke wasn't very thick in the valley, but a few miles later, I met a fire crew roadblock.  I would be escorted through an active burn, they informed me.   Now, I know a million ladies who would love to have swarthy, beardy fire guy walk them through a smoky woodland.   I am not one.  I really can't handle much wood smoke that well.  When he offered to drive me, instead, due to the just-set burns along the road edges, I gave up two miles of walking a road to just get out of the fire.  His ride ended at Hwy 89a, from where I'd planned to hitch into Jacob Lake, anyway.  Upon hearing this, he just drove me the extra couple miles. 

At 9am, I sat down noisomely at a busy lunch counter, feeling exactly like Pigpen (Peanuts, not Grateful Dead).  Eyeing the door the whole time to insure the safety of my pack, I wolfed a large breakfast that might have had ham and eggs in it--I ate it too fast to notice.  I got a cinnamon roll to go, which I shoved in the brain of my pack, grabbed a Gatorade and some postcards, and sat in the lobby to charge my phone.  There were two Europeans there with whom I struck up a conversation.  The male was a geologist from Germany,  the female a geographer from France.   Excellent time-kiling talk ensued, at the end of which I yogied a ride to the trailhead at 89a.  I briefly got us lost and annoyed the German.  Way to be a stereotype, buddy!

From here, the trail was a decade old burn.  Late successional plants like aspen had begun to fill in some of the gaps, and golden stands of them filled the rills and hillsides.  Wild rose and lupine dominated some areas, with some astragalus and burrobush.  At the heart of the burn, though, there were only grasses with occasional prunus species.  Here I found a lovely horned lizard and 6 does at one of the wildlife drinkers. 

I walked slowly today.  My entire right foot has become a solid blister, and my upper left leg has been fiercely aching all day.  Lots of stops, several obscenities aloud.  But, I somehow walked 17 miles and rode through two in a forest service truck (from which I saw a famous Kaibab white-tailed squirrel and a hen turkey).  I hope I'm not in this kind of pain at the damned Grand Canyon in a few days.