Day 99 Home State

Today we finished Vermont and entered New Hampshire!

I slept quite well last night. The yard behind Dan’s house made for fantastic camping with the sound of the stream as background noise. We woke up around 6:30 and started hiking around 8. I was hoping Dan could fill my water since the stream ran through cow pastures, but Dan didn’t turn on any lights by 8AM, so we assumed he was still asleep. I decided to get moving even though I was completely out of water. The next marked source was 2.5 miles away after a steep half mile climb. Fortunately we found a spring that wasn’t in our trail guides after about a mile and a half. 


Shortly after we hiked through some fields with good views of NH and VT.




We also passed some very large stone walls. It will be cool to see all the knee high stone walls that are iconic in NH.



We had a few more field walks in the afternoon.





Reaching NH has been a huge motivation for me throughout the hike. For me, VT, NH, and ME are the states that make me interested in the AT. If the trail didn’t include them I don’t think I would be interested in it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved hiking in Virginia, the Smokies, even Pennsylvania. But hiking through those states to reach New Hampshire and Maine makes the whole experience so much more appealing to me. NH and ME are very remote, difficult hiking with some of the most beautiful mountains in the country. Of course I’m biased. But I’m very excited to have the capstone of the journey in the remote and rugged northeast. 


To finish off VT we had a surprisingly easy 2 mile road walk through Norwich VT, where the Naval Academy is located. 




We then crossed the Connecticut River and entered New Hampshire! I feel very accomplished to have walked to my home stage from Georgia. Now for the fun part.




After entering NH the trail goes through the town of Hanover, the home of Dartmouth College. We walked to a grocery store, grabbed a resupply, then got takeout pizza and sandwiches from a brick oven pizzeria in town. We sat outside the grocery store at some picnic tables and ate dinner. We then walked just out of town and back into the woods and pitched our tents. All said and done we hiked almost 24 miles and got all set up at camp around 9PM.


Tomorrow we will wake up early and hike around 17 miles. Then I will get picked up and brought down to Beverly to surprise Ashley with a weekend together. Spencer will hike another couple days and zero with Brooke on Monday. I will catch up on Sunday and Monday while he zeros.


Goodnight,

Walker 





If you want to follow Spencer, here is his log:

https://www.instagram.com/baxter.bound?utm_source=qr&igsh=MWx4MzRqa3M4dGk3Mw==

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