Day 27

Miles hiked: 2
LT miles: 207

Absolutely gorgeous morning.  And we had the shelter to ourselves all night which is incredibly rare.  Also rare is all the 4 wall shelters up here.  They've all just been the 3 sided kind up until here aside from one or two. 
Took forever to get warm last night but we eventually did.  Made getting up so hard though.  But we slowly got up and made coffee and got moving and warmed up again.  

My ankle is pretty swollen, had a hard time getting my boot on. 

We headed down the mountain, both of us in a lot of pain.  We decided since the bottom was a major state route with 2 towns nearby to get a room for a night.  We hadn't planned to stop for another couple days but I need to see how bad my injuries are from my falls and my arthritis is flared something awful.  A night in a bed sounds like heaven.  As luck would have it there was an inn with a room for insanely cheap for this area about 6 miles down. 

Passed a TON of day hikers.  They all looked clean and smelled good.  Not dead in the eyes.

When we got to the road I saw a parking lot ahead.  We figured hang there and eat and see about hitching into Stowe or walking.  As luck would have it the parking lot was for a visitor center for the Green Mountain Club.  (They manage the LT) they offered us a ride to our inn.  I could have cried. 

The people at the inn were SO nice.  I swear the people in VT treat LT hikers like celebrities. They don't have laundry but without even asking she offered to wash our clothes.  

We showered and passed out for a solid 2 hours.   Then hobbled down to an ice cream shop and walked/limped around the area a bit.
Mt. Mansfield from a distance  
We got some ice cream,  pizza and beers and hung out with some locals which we always love.

We talked throughout the day and decided we're not done, but we're done.  We're gonna get a ride back to Burlington to get the car, grab some snack and water and head up to journeys end and and camp up there then spend a few days being trail angels.  Parking along the trail and giving snacks and offering rides and taking trash etc.  Maybe hike a few other sections.  So we won't claim to be true end-to-enders but that's ok.  I'm absolutely disappointed but it's bad this year and we've both had enough falls and injuries that it's just not worth it.  In the end we've done over 200 of the 272 miles.



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