Into the Woods

We didn't see any bears on the hike. Matt pointed out what could have been a bear's paw-print, but also the print could have belonged to one of the small-horse-sized mutts we met on the trail. Besides the dogs, here are the various fauna that we encountered: tick, snake(!), squirrel, and pair of ants carrying off a grub. I'd call that a success, no?

Even if a naysayer might be unimpressed by the hike's modest menagerie of critters, no one could help but be charmed by its absolutely beautiful setting. I love DC for many reasons, one of which is that an hour-and-a-half drive can take me far beyond the city and into some lovely mountain town in the Shenandoahs. The area where we hiked was all pale green and soft violet. Most trees had not yet sprouted a full head of leaves, but some intermittently boasted a shower of pinky-purple blossoms.

We hopped our way across streams and traipsed around sparkly waterfalls along what promised to be a moderately easy trail. I checked out the topographic maps and the narrative description of the trail that Erin and Matt had thoughtfully provided. "Yall," I asked, "um, why does it say that the next part of the hike is 'very steep with switchbacks?'"

Indeed, our benign trail soon took a turn towards the promised steepness and switchbacks, and my ensuing light-headedness taught me the important life lesson that one should not indulge in a fair amount of wine-drinking the evening before a substantial trek. But then we had reached the trail's summit and realized that the grueling past half-hour had led us to an outstanding postcard panorama of a view. Hawks dipped above us, and I swear we could see all the way across Virginia.

After the hike, four extremely dirty outdoors-people made their way to Spelunker's Frozen Custard & Cavern Burgers to check out the area's custard scene. Lucky for us, the good folks at Spelunkers weren't put off by our appearance and commenced to serve us some of their delectable "gooey Butterfinger" flavor of the day in homemade waffle cones. Later that afternoon, when N and I had returned to DC, we priced out the cost of starting our own custard store. The store would be located in the U Street area, which is woefully short on dessert-specific enterprises. I'm not sure what its name would be, or when N and I could gather enough start-up cash to finance the operation, but I can promise you that we will be doing lots of market research at Spelunker's so that we can bring the outstandingly good waffle cones of Front Royal, Virginia to the DC metro area.