Day 12. Rest

Mile 1558 – October Mountain Shelter To Mile 1569 – Dalton

After rain most of the night, we awoke to a nice morning and quickly packed up. We were both anticipating our first night off the trail since we started and wasted no time getting started on the 11 miles into town.

The trail was muddy but we are starting to get used to it. Some sections had boardwalks or other means of avoiding the worst of it.

Muddy trail

Blueberries and raspberries are everywhere in this area and we slowed down just a little to have a snack of wild blueberries on one of the peaks we crossed today.

Wild blueberries

The trail leads right down Main Street in Dalton so we followed the white blazes to within a few blocks of our hotel. Many businesses in town are geared toward helping hikers, and the hotel we are at is very hiker friendly. They even immediately started doing our laundry for us as soon as we arrived.

After that, town food was the next priority. Rocket’s appetite is really crazy. I’ve never seen her eat so much at one time.

Giant plate of chicken was gone in no time

There were a lot of hikers in town and it was fun to see a lot of familiar faces in an unfamiliar place.