Saturday June 8, 19.5mi/31.4km

Hanover (1749.8) to Lyme-Dorchester Road (1769.3) (NH)

I took a leisurely morning and made a hot breakfast, and Karen gave us a ride back to town at the spot we left off at 8:30am. After a quick stop at the food co-op, we walked thru the Dartmouth baseball fields, and into the woods.It was an immediate change to dark and shady forest, which was perfect for hiking uphill. It was quite warm in the sun, around 80F/27C, so any shade was nice. Once in awhile the trail would emerge at a swamp, and it felt hot.The trail in this section is maintained by the Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC), and they have all these cool orange signs.Around lunchtime, we climbed Moose mountain. And since I love moose, I had to get a photo of this sign too.And the summit of the mountain actually had a view!A short ways down from the summit is a shelter, and I stopped for lunch there. Again, these signs are amazing pieces of artwork.Later in the afternoon, I caught up to Bob as we were climbing up to Holts Ledge, which had nice views to the east.Apparently this area is also a ski hill for the Dartmouth ski team. I haven’t sat on a ski lift in way too long, so I took a rest, haha.Ski runs have the funniest names sometimes.We continued on another three miles, and setup camp in a gravel area near a road, since there aren’t any shelters nearby, and the woods in this area are full of ticks.A couple of other hikers joined us later, and I’m enjoying this quiet spot next to a creek.