Date: 2007-10-26
From: Front Royal, VA

To: Luray, VA
Miles today: 0.0

About everything but the weather improved for the 25th. There was one drip that had continued throughout the night, despite duct tape and a bandanna, but luckily Uly was drunk enough when he went to bed that he fell asleep right under it and I didn't get sprinkled in the face by the splatters throughout the night. It was super duper foggy, and Barbarossa won at the "getting ready game," because he was rather anxious to finish the trail. He was the only one to leave before noon (a 11:57, however). Uly left right at noon, and Jean Pierre and I set out at about 5 after. We arrived to find the cork about to fly at the northern Shennandoah National Park backcountry permit station. The cork flew, the cigar was lit, and we all proceeded to get drunk off of California Champagne standing in the rain in the middle of the trail; it was quite the sight. We bid Barbarossa farewell as he walked the .2 miles south to the sidetrail where he had flipped from. He disappeared into the mist and civilization as we tromped on, with 9.5 miles to do to the shelter. I hauled freight to the shelter, and arrived to find 5 other people already there. I'm not a big fan of arriving at shelters to find them packed with day/weekend hikers, especially when it's raining. I warned everyone that there were a bunch of thru-hikers coming and to stake out their spots, which resulted in them consolidating gear that was strewn all over the place. I grabbed a spot on the upper deck hoping to stay a bit warmer. I went to pump water and came back to the shelter to find one of the guys using a stove. We had been told that there was a fire restriction in place that prevented the use of stoves. I asked if everyone had agreed to use stoves and not tell, but was told that the park had lifted the ban, less than 12 hours after it was placed. Uly showed up and we launched into a rather aggressive firewood gathering campaign, and with a few pages of Washington Post and a touch of white gas we had a roaring blaze going. One of the people that was in the shelter was a guy named Jim, who was on top of Franconia Ridge 3 years ago with his daughter when Trail Mix showed up and started making drinks with his battery powered blender! I guess that the whole thing wasn't actually a dream. The few remaining liters of wine from the night before were polished off with the help of the day hikers, and we all fell asleep to drizzle and occassional showers. It's probably no surprise that it was raining again the next morning. I had to make it to Luray, Va in order to meet my cousin, and I wanted to make it to town sometime in the mid afternoon so that I could hit up the library for some internet time. We left the shelter and a few miles later, I was walking down the trail when I saw a young deer standing in the trail. It was pouring rain, and I've got plenty of deer pictures, so I didn't bother to dig my camera out of the middle of my pack. It quickly ran off into the woods as I started back to walking, and not 50 feet away, there was a huge deer in the middle of the trail, with a 10-pt set of antlers! I kept walking, thinking that he would run off and let me pass, but he didn't. I clicked my poles. He stood still. I clicked my poles again. He ducked his head and scratched his neck with his back hoof. I started walking towards him. He moved about 5 feet off of the trail and sat down in the grass. I was a bit wary of walking past him, because I've seen videos of people being attacked by deer, and while it'd make a hell of a story, it doesn't look very pleasant. I walked past without incident, and decided that the situation definitely called for some photos, so I dug the camera out of inside my pack and snapped a few. Made it to a wayside, which is kind of like a convenience store/rest area/junk souvenier shop, and ordered a coffee and a sausage egg and cheese. Everyone else showed up as I was eating, and we ended up sitting around for about 2 hours leaving muddly puddles all over the store. We thanked the people working there for letting us loiter in their store for that long, and they said it was OK, because there was hardly anyone in the park. Runway made arrangements for her, Andrew and Uly to go to her grandma's house in Charlottesville for the evening, and we all set out together for Thornton Gap. Uly and I came close to running. We had a 4.5 mile hour, and celebrated by eating fruit roll-ups and drinking iced tea. We got to the place where I met Mellow, a NOBO, back in June when I was on a short hike with Mom. I told Uly how when I met Mellow I was somewhat taken aback by his unkept appearance and smell, and we laughed at the fact that I probably smelled twice as worse, and certainly look more like a bum than Mellow did. I hiked the hill to the lookout that Mom and I went to in 11 minutes, soaking wet and with a pack. It had taken me close to 20 minutes in June; in the sun, with no pack. I'm turning into a walking machine! Not sure how exciting that is, but it should enable me to finish this trail a bit quicker. We got to the Pass Mtn. Shelter, and Jean Pierre and Uly headed down the shelter while I headed for the road to Luray. I got to the road, and before I could walk up to the bridge, I got picked up by a guy driving a VW. He said he didn't care about the water, so I threw my soaking wet pack in the backseat and hopped in. He said he would take me to wherever I needed to go in Luray, so we set the course towards the library. He's a HVAC sheet metal worker in DC, but lives 20 miles south of Luray (rather far away for those unfamiliar with the area). He spends the weeknight's at his daughter's house in Maryland and only comes home on the weekends--yuck! I accidently called his line of work "shit metal," but he laughed and said it wasn't too exciting. I told him to quit and hike the AT. We talked about everything from living in tourist towns to the Damascus, VA police chief being arrested for dealing meth; he said that if you want to hike a lot of miles in a day to smoke meth and it'll let you go forever. I didn't really know how to respond to this, so I laughed and looked a little harder at his steering column, which looked like it had been hot wired. He dropped me off at the library and I wrote my last TJ, which ended somewhat abruptly because the library closed. As I was walking out of the library, a guy sitting in a truck in the parking lot honked his horn. I walked over, and he offered me a ride to wherever I was about to walk to. I said "Budget Inn," he said "not a problem." He advised me to look at a room before I paid, and said that if it didn't look like a decent place, that he would take me to his house and let me sleep there! I'd never seen the dude before, and would have accepted except for that my cousin was coming and I didn't know what kind of establishment this guy ran at his house. I walked into the place, and asked to see a room. The manager, James, said that I could check out 211, but he didn't know why he only had one key. I walked down to 211, and due to the somewhat suspect lack of the second key, peered through the window. Someone was definitely already there, all sprawled out on the bed. I gave the guy in the truck a thumbs up, and he drove off as I walked back to the office. James said that the guy was supposed to be in 210; obviously wasn't the case, though. He then said he was going to do something that he had never done before; he gave me the master key to the whole hotel because he didn't have any keys for the last room available. I'd never been given the master key to a whole hotel before! The room looked fine, so I went back and paid. He let me keep the master key, and said that he would swing by sometime with the actual room key. I spread out all of my stuff in an attempt to dry it out from the previous four days' rain. About an hour later, I decided to take a shower, but there was no hot water. Four minivans of immigrant painters had just rolled in, so I figured that they had all taken showers and used up the hot water. 45 minutes later, there was still no hot water. I called the desk and they said they were trying to figure out what was going on. They called back rather quickly to say they were totally out of gas; apparently, the Budget Inn doesn't keep up with its budget! 2 hours later, there was still no hot water, so I took a cold wash, which was rather invigorating. As luck would have it, 15 minutes later they called to say that the water was back to working. My cousin arrived around 10, and we set off to find a bar. The first one was closed, and when we got to second one, at about 10:30, a rather ragged looking lady behind the bar said "we're closed," despite the 10 or so people sitting at the bar. She did confirm that Wal-mart sold beer until midnight, so we headed to Wally World for groceries and beer, and sat back at the hotel drinking Blue Moon.