I did my first back country backpacking in August. It was only two days/one night, but it's such a great experience. The people I meet along the trails are always stellar people. Even if my toenail is still purple, I can't wait to get back.
I've yet to meet someone I didn't get along with on a trail! :) What did you do to your toe? My girlfriend and I decided to walk entirely too far without breaks (~26km/day) the first couple of days... Ended up with blisters everywhere on our feet. We learned pretty quickly to take a lot of breaks!
26 km/day is aggressive! That's about my top end, depending on trail conditions and difficulty. Most of my hikes are about half that. Basically my toe kept bumping the front of my boot. I had two pairs of socks with me, one medium weight and one light weight. I knew the medium ones worked better and wore them the longer, steeper day. The decent is usually what gets me, and that went fine. The next day they were still damp in the morning, so I put on the light weight ones. The extra space in my boot let my foot slide too much. Blisters weren't bad, but my toenail bumping the front of the boot all day bruised it. It isn't painful, but the nail still looks gnarly.
When we planned the trip, we started with about 13km/day in mind. By the time we'd reached out first stop on the trip it was midday... So we just kept walking until we got to roughly where our second camp was supposed to be. Then we decided that we weren't feeling that bad and did the same the next day. Which was fine after a few days, but our prep hikes had all been pretty short... Like maybe 5-12km. So it was a bit of a shock to the system. Damn beautiful though, so that made up for a lot of it :)