Date: 2008-04-30
From: Gravel Springs Hut VA

To: Front Royal VA
Miles today: 13.4

Day 73 ¢ Wednesday April 30 ¢ Front Royal VA ¢ Miles Today: 13.4 Total Miles: 957.6Happy Birthday, Grasshopper!Last night, we heard an animal's last cries of life right near our tent. We believe an owl had scored a small rodent and boy, did it wake us up!! It was quite loud.We did not quite hit the trail ¢running at 5:30¢ this morning as we hoped to last night. We had a leisure morning, somewhat. It took us about an hour to hit the trail. We still had a respectable start by 6:00 because it's town day and we wanted to get in there, get our chores done and have time to relax! On the way out this morning, we saw numerous deer and apparently just missed seeing a bear. A day-hiker reported that a bear had just crossed the trail in front of him. Bummer, we missed it by about 5 minutes. All we got to see was evidence of the bear - fresh scat. We also ran into an older gentleman out bird watching. We stopped and chatted. We learned that the "tweet" birdcall we¢ve been hearing is another call of the Towhee. We thought the only call of the Towhee was ¢drink your tea¢. Now we know that birds can have numerous calls. We also learned the call of the Ovenbird as we were standing there. Boy, are we getting educated or what? The terrain was pretty easy most of the day. There were still some rock climbs where Grasshopper scored another fall so the score is now 8-2.We were to the road at 11:50-12:00 trying to secure our hitch into town. We had heard that this could be a difficult hitch, so when we saw the nice wide berm, we decided to walk and hitch at the same time, as we might end up having to walk the entire 4 miles to town. But, as always, we secured our hitch within 10 minutes! A gentleman in a pick-up truck offered us a lift. Unfortunately though he smoked while we were in the truck. We were thankful for the ride but not so thankful for the smoke.   He dropped us off at the post office. We tried our best to yogi a ride from the post office to the motel with him, but his comment was that the motel was nearby and it wouldn¢t be too far of a walk for us after what we've been through. Unfortunately he missed the point. Since we have walked SO far, we didn¢t want to walk any unnecessary extra miles! Oh well. But lo and behold, as we were standing outside the post office with all of our packages, a young lady heading into the post office asked if we needed a ride! To which we responded, of course, with ¢Yeah, sure.¢ After she had finished her business in the post office we loaded everything into her vehicle and enjoyed a nice ride to the motel. She was a real nice young lady who broke her hip in the military 17 months ago and was still using a crutch to get around. She mentioned that as a kid, her father would help chauffeur hikers around town, so she is carrying on the tradition. We checked into the motel about 12:30, showered, got settled in and then dug into all of our care packages. Mr. & Mrs. Grasshopper¢s care package had some truffles, trail mix with chocolate and a nice birthday card that said, "Some days, we're not sure which way we should go, follow your heart's path and let your dreams run free and may your special day be all that birthday can be. Happy Birthday." Very, very appropriate for what we are doing!The Fidelity team¢s care package had a huge birthday card, an Appalachian Trail T-shirt from Deidre and Jim, homemade soap and rosemary from Susan V-K, a 1 pound+ bar of dark chocolate, brownies, moleskin and Fabreeze. They must think that we are rather stinky! When we were done with the Fabreeze, we donated it to the front desk, as we definitely were not humping it! What a great assortment of goodies from the Fidelity team! THANKS Fidelity team Angels!!And there was the package from John and Jinny. They sent us candy, crackers, ¢motivators¢ and a baggy of sand with a note on it, saying:¢Put some of this in Brakeman's one shoe so he walks in circles. That will be good for an extra 100 miles or so and he will end up doing more than you. Put some in his oatmeal for the extra crunch and filtering for his GI tract. Which is always a good thing for Brakeman. Put the rest in his backpack to weigh him down a bit so you can pass him and bark to your heart's content for his enjoyment and oh, enjoy some candy". Now to describe the ¢motivators¢. The motivators were laminated pictures that we are to tie on the back of each other's backpack so that it will motivate us to walk fast towards it all day long.   Grasshopper will be looking at a picture of chocolate and a sexy guy. Brakeman will be looking at a picture of a donut and a sexy girl. We have the pictures tied to our backpacks for tomorrow's hike. Stay tuned as to how well they work to motivate us and if one picture was more motivating than another! Very creative gifts; we loved them!We headed off on foot to the Food Lion to do our food shopping. Back at the motel, we studied our purchases. We were quite pleased with how we did. We bought less food than normal! Perhaps we have this Compulsive Grocery Shopping Disorder under control after all! Oh wait. Drats!   Double drats! We forgot to purchase our dinners. Oh man, it's a mile round trip to the grocery store and this is supposed to be a half day of rest.   How in the heck did we forget to purchase dinners? Now what to do? We certainly don¢t want to walk back there! Time for creative yogi thinking. Ah, ha. We devised a game plan! We went to the front desk and asked if anybody was getting off work soon and if they could run us to Food Lion. Score!   A maintenance guy was getting off work momentarily and would run us to Food Lion!   We bought our 3 dinners and he even dropped us back at the motel!   A very sweet deal. A very careless mistake!I think we gained weight this past week. That is a very good thing! We also noticed that our feet are thicker. There is a puffiness or thickness to them from all the pounding. The feet look wider. The toes look fatter. There's a hardness on the bottom of the foot - in the heel and under all the toes, especially the big toe. The skin just feels very thick. After nearly 1000 miles, we can definitely see and feel a difference in our feet.We have a 3.5-day stretch to Harper's Ferry, where we will meet Brakeman¢s brother Mike. Our food bag is completely full, despite the short segment! Actually, it's overflowing - the sandwiches will not fit in it. We are humping a whole lot more food than in the beginning of the hike. We can carry extra food on these shorter stretches, but we won't be able to on our next segment as it is a 6-day stretch. We just can't pack that much food in our bags. When we can, we¢ll stock up on food and hopefully it will help with the weight loss issues. Goodnight from Front Royal.