Bama to Baxter, Day 20: A Very Productive Day Zero in Dalton, GA

I slept well last night; I’m sure that can be attributed to being in a motel room in a king size bed with no one else in the room. My plan as of last night was to get up early, do my homework in the morning, and then just relax in the afternoon at the motel. Well, I ended up sleeping until 7:30. I wasn’t sure when the motel stopped serving breakfast, so I quickly threw on some clothes and ran to the food area. Turns out I had a couple more hours, but I sat down and ate anyway. I still wanted to try to finish all my work as soon as possible. After that, the morning pretty much followed the script. I already washed my clothes. I’ve already done my replenishment shopping. I contacted the family members. I wrote for the blog. I continued planning the route for next week. It was a relaxed but productive morning.

I went to the McDonald’s next door for lunch and while I was there I remembered that I wanted to buy another can of fuel for the stove. I grabbed my phone, did a quick search, and found a neighborhood Walmart store about 2 miles away. After lunch, I walked to Walmart and found out that the neighborhood stores are just grocery stores, so that store didn’t have stove fuel. Then I looked for sporting goods stores and found one about five miles away. The good news is that it was five miles in the direction of the motel, so if I could get to the store via Uber, I could easily walk back to the motel. I had an Uber in six minutes.

Fernando, my driver, arrived on time and answered my questions about Dalton as we drove to the sporting goods store. After he dropped me off, I went in and bought fuel for the stove and some freeze-dried dinners. When I checked Apple Maps to find out the distance back to the motel, I found that I had a 2.2 mile hike ahead of me. Of course, this entire hike was without a backpack, so opening my legs at my natural pace was a delight.

Back at the motel, I wrote some more and started thinking about what I was going to make for dinner. My first thought was to run to Taco Bell, but I decided to eat one of the leftovers from dinner to save some money. I took those foods out of my food bag and repacked the bag because Sarah from Toadshade Hill Hostel, at the end of Dalton Roadwalk, had agreed earlier in the day to transport my food bag back to the hostel so I wouldn’t have to carry the weight tomorrow. And she was due to arrive at any moment.

After Sarah showed up, I decided it was time to make dinner, so I went back to the motel cafeteria and boiled some water in the microwave to make dinner. It was nice to sit at a table and chair and watch TV while I prepared and ate my food. I would have loved to have a soda with dinner, but I was too lazy to go get one, so I just drank water.

After dinner I went back to the room and made sure I had everything packed and ready so I could get an early start in the morning. I also made sure to plug in my battery pack and my In Reach device. I checked home for the last time and at 9 I was already in bed. Before I fell asleep, I treated myself to an episode of Contraction on AppleTV. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and try the first few episodes. If you like it, be sure to check it out. Ted Lasso also on Apple TV.

Happy trails. . .

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