Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Front Royal, VA

Jo and I have, after roughly fifty miles over five days, arrived at Front Royal, VA — our first resupply (and a day ahead of Jo's conservative getting-back-into-gear schedule).

(Technical notes: I saw that the geocoding of the images wasn't working last post; and no luck this time either. The RAW to JPEG converter I downloaded for Windows may be messing up the images' timestamps; or I may be doing something else wrong. The library in Front Royal blocks downloading applications, so no improvement for this post. Comments on better means of presentation implementable on the trail are quite welcome! Perhaps separate map and photos would do just as well for now.)

Jo and I do get along after all, which is good! We are both, in fact, Ps (Meyers-Briggs), so we spend plenty of time saying discussing options and then both saying 'sure, either sounds good'. I hike faster on hills, but neither of us is on a deadline, so it just means taking breaks to even things out. (And when Jo woke early and got an hour and a half head start on me, it took me the day to catch up — with a few helpful notes about destinations and water along the way.)

We've run into a few southbounders (AT hikers headed south; sobos), and a few nobos, and plenty of (very clean-looking) day hikers. We ended up sharing a camping area with three other sobos one night, which is unusual; but fun to have occasional company.

Our next leg will carry us into Shenandoah National Park — reportedly very scenic, and very hiker-friendly; things like stores and trash cans and potable water all over the place. (In this last leg, aside from the usual requirement of treating all our water, we've seen a lot of very low creeks and a couple shelters with dry springs.)

3 comments:

  1. Hi! I've finally figured out how to add comments! This post is so exciting. Glad to see Actual Footage (so to speak) and to find out how it's going.
    I wonder if all the sobos are planning to hike till GA, and if you're likely to interact more than once.
    Low water can be problematic. (We've probably related our 'forgot the canteen' story more than once. ) But I guess there was water in the shower?
    Shenandoah looks up-and-down on the map: scenic, but challenging!
    Have you slept in any shelters?
    RE: permanent dirt in feet: take it from One Who Knows: it grows out, and bleaches nicely in a swimming pool.
    Hugs!

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  2. Of course Jo would find someone to hike with who knows their Myers-Briggs personality type.

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  3. Photos!!! I just realized you'd posted some more, thank you... they bring back memories from my solo sojourn in northern VA... morning coffee with some rock climbers, sharing that tiny Dick's Dome shelter with some boy scouts (yeah), almost getting attacked by coyotes by the bears den... have fun out there! Phil

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