URL rewrite - odd behavior

If I go to:

http://www.mysite.com/gallery

I see the default blank root album (and default album description) and no gallery navigation block

If I go to:

http://www.mysite.com/gallery/

Note the trailing slash! I then see my the root album with my custom album description and the gallery navigation block.

I tried to mess around with the hook_menu function in gallery.module by changing the path from gallery to gallery/ but I got Page not found error.