Date: 2015-07-28
From: Gravel Springs Hut

To: Front Royal
Miles today: 14.0
Weather: light rain

Up at sunrise in Gravel Springs Hut. No copperhead in or on my shoes (Hooray!). Learning to eat and pack quickly. Taking off my dry camp clothes and putting on my still sweat-soaked hiking clothes from yesterday is the biggest challenge. Hey, leaving on the dry clothes would only result in two sweaty sets at the end of the day. The high canopy of trees in this forest allows only dappled sun to get to the ground. The trees are 100 to 120 feet high. The ground stays moist as result - with the only exception being areas at high elevation where the rock overlay prevents many trees from growing. Hanging up wet clothes on a line in camp in the late afternoon does little to get them dry. Have another 14 miler today. Going to bypass the next shelter and go on to Front Royal, the northern terminus of the Shenandoah Nat'l Park. I could cut a few miles off by stopping at a shelter (hut) instead. But I plan to stop at a newer hiker hostel called Mountain Home. It's just a few steps off the trail, but a few miles further down the trail than the shelter/hut. The promise of a real dinner, laundered clothes and a decent bed provides the motivation for this trek.Of course the first part of my hike today will be uphill. That's fine, it's when I am the freshest. There will be more down than up after that, so the trip will be a little easier. However, in the back of my mind I was thinking - what goes down must eventually go back up in the mountains. Tomorrow could be a bear.While hiking along I chanced upon a buck feeding on ferns beside the trail. Because this was still in the Nat'l Park he was quite docile and hung around while I took photos. If you enlarge the photo to the left, you'll see that his antlers are still in velvet. Eventually they will grow to full length and the velvet will start to shed. The buck will help rid itself of the old velvet by rubbing his antlers on a tree limb or trunk. The antlers will then be a bone white or ivory color. Then he'll be ready for the rut. Handsome as can be.I got to Mountain Home about 4:30 pm. I knew exactly how to get there from the trail because I was able to get a call in to Lisa, one of the owners of Mountain Home. The photo of Mountain Home on their Facebook site is of a huge plantation mansion. Lisa kept telling me to go to the cabbin (yes, two "b's") over the phone. When I arrived, I naturally started towards the large imposing structure. Lisa popped her head out the door of the much, much smaller cabbin and said, "Over here!" I was a little taken aback. The cabbin was quite small - no bigger than 20' X 20'. It had two floors. The upstairs had three single beds and the only bathroom. I had to bend my head at the toilet to do my manly thing as the ceiling was angled at that point in the bathroom. Didn't favor tall dudes.The first floor had three rooms - two small rooms with beds and a small kitchen. Lisa and her husband slept in one of those first floor bedrooms. You get the picture - this place was small. But it was cosy.Lisa explained that she and her husband were in the process of renovating the old plantation mansion. It is of the classic variety with huge pillars on the front porch. And it is old! One section was built in the 1840s, with a second section added in the late 1860s. Yes, the original owner had slaves on the property. The cabbin was used for some of them.There were two other hikers using the cabbin that night, Bama and her gentleman companion(forgot his trail name!). Bama was a mature hiker from, of all places, Alabama. She and her companion had covered large sections of the AT over the years. Her partner had hiked the whole thing, coupling it with the Florida trail as well. That gave him real bragging rights. He'd hiked from the Florida Keys all the way up to Mt. Katahdin in Maine!Lisa drove me in to Front Royal so I could get cash (for payment), KFC for dinner, and to launder my clothes. She came to pick me up when I was through as well.Part of the offering at Mountain Home is a tour of the old mansion. She and her husband were working towards making it a B&B upon completion of renovations. At Lisa's beckoning, we donned our headlamps late in the evening and headed out to the plantation home. It was a wonderful tour. Lisa knew the intricate history of the plantation and its original owner. We were treated to a look at every nook and cranny of the old home. Many substantial renovations had already been completed. Lisa explained that she and her husband were trying to get tax credits through the Nat'l Park Service by keeping the renovations true to character. Of course, that added a layer of red tape that slowed progress.After the tour I managed to eek out a text to my wife, JoAnn. I gave her the overview of the mansion. I also promised to take her to the mansion once it has been completed. Shows promise of being a real gem! As I suspected, JoAnn didn't object to the proposal.In the morning, Lisa treated the 3 of us hikers to a fine breakfast. After that, I was off on a trek to Manassas Gap Shelter. It would only be an 11 mile hike. But I recalled my thought from the previous day on that hike mostly downhill; what goes down must eventually go up on any trail inn the mountains. I was about to find out there was some truth to that idea......