Date: 2003-07-03
From: Gravel Springs Hut

To: Front Royal, Va.
Miles today: 13.4
Weather: overcast clouds

Sleeping on the upper platform in the shelter, Tuesday night was marked by an uneasy truce between myself and a sizeable spider hanging by a short strand from one of the roof beams just over my left shoulder. As I lay reading, he made a couple of forays down towards me but zipped back up his strand of web again when I gave him a gentle nudge with my book. It says something about my growing harmony with the outdoor life that I resisted the urge to evict him right then. I switched off my headlamp and went to sleep. I was probably also thinking about the gentle lecture I got from ¢Foxie¢ for squashing an ant in a shelter a few days ago. I know, we¢re all getting a bit strange out here!   The only disturbance through the night was an unholy outburst of snarling and growling close by the shelter. Raccoons most likely. I awoke at first light to see Mr Spider hanging in the same spot as the night before, so we had got along just fine. Shambling still half asleep along the path to retrieve our food bags from the hoist, the presence of raccoons was more or less confirmed by the amount of garbage littered round the base of the stand. Previous tenants had left an open plastic bag filled with trash hanging from the top of the hoist. Only a raccoon we think could have managed to get up a smooth metal pole about 14 feet high to reach it.   Still no sign of ¢Thistle¢ and ¢Two Speeds¢, but we reckoned they should have made it to the Gravel Springs Hut sometime this morning, and make it to Front Royal by the end of the day. If not, then certainly tomorrow.We went at a good clip throughout the afternoon, I, felt really good, overtook ¢Foxie,¢and was positively charging for the next shelter. As usual in these circumstances I messed up. I missed a double blaze indicating a sharp turn to the left and carried straight on downhill for almost a mile. Only when I came out of the woods at a hostel on the edge of a residential area did I realise my mistake. With gritted teeth, I retraced my steps, all of it uphill, having lost almost an hour because of my error. It started to rain, and by the time I arrived at the Tom Floyd Wayside Hut the rain was settled. This hut is the last in Shenandoah National Park for northbounders, and southbounders are required to register here before they continue. To my amazement, among the people sitting in the Hut were ¢Thistle¢ and ¢Two Speeds¢. They had been coming along at a phenomenal pace today, and apparently had only been a short way behind me when I took my inadvertent detour. They realised something was amiss when they arrived here and I hadn¢t! ¢Foxie¢, in her slower but unwavering style, was up ahead once again, and we set off at a pace to catch up, which we did not too far short of the US522 trailhead. We were a collection of drookit, muddy specimens by this stage, not the kind of state that encourages even compassionate drivers to stop and offer a ride. But someone eventually did. He was on his way into Front Royal to buy fireworks for a Fourth of July party on Friday, and dropped us off at the Super 8 Motel on the south side of town. Today has been a typical zero dayoff-trail, and many of the things we need ¢ an outfitters, a large K-Mart, a coin laundry, and a bank ¢ are all to be found in Royal Plaza just a short way down the road.   Front Royal is a fine town, the county town of Warren County. Most of it sits inside a triangular area bounded by highways ¢ two of them, US522 (Commerce Avenue) and US340 (Royal Avenue) run south-north and converge on the north end of town. The third highway, Route 55, runs east-west, and cuts across the other two highways on the southern edge of town to complete the triangle. These three roads carry most of the traffic and protect the ¢downtown¢ area of Front Royal from the privations of the motor car and the bedlam and din of most modern towns. The focus of downtown is Main Street, about a half mile long from its junction with Royal Avenue at the courthouse on the west side to its junction with Commerce Avenue near the Quality Inn at the eastern end. It¢s a very fine example of small town America, the quite narrow street is lined with small shops and stores on both sides, including a cinema and a Woolworths. The pavements (sidewalks) are wide and laid in red brick. The townspeople walk in the overbearing heat in the shade of a line of maple trees on each side of the street. A handsome clock perched on a fine black wrought iron pillar speaks of an earlier age. Just about here, about half way along, the buildings along the south side give way to a gazebo, a kind of town central square and the visitor centre, which is actually the original station of the Virginia Midland Railroad. A well-maintained caboose sits adjacent to the visitor centre to mark the area¢s earlier function in the life of the town. Running to the north off East Main Street is Chester Street which contains most of the oldest houses in Front Royal. Some of these are still domestic residences, others have become museums, historic societies, or have the status of historic buildings. The Courthouse, on the corner of East Main and Royal, is the grandest building in town, in its grounds an impressive monument commemorates the contribution made by Warren County regiments to the Confederate cause. It was all around here in May 1862 that Jackson troops fought door to door and street by street to drive Kenly¢s stubborn Union force north from the town.      After reprovisioning, we visited the outfitters store. One of the guys there, called Steve, has offered to run us back up to the trailhead tomorrow morning. Very kind of him considering tomorrow will be the great national holiday.