After leaving Shenandoah National Park following a glowing red sunrise, we headed to Luray Caverns for the day. The journey along the Skyline Scenic Drive offered some beautiful views of the verdant Old Rag Mountain foregrounded by colourful Autumn wildflowers.
Luray Caverns was the Disney World of Virginia adventures. We started by touring the caverns, which claim to be the most visited cave in America. The whole park was set up to accommodate hundreds of visitors needing to wait in mile long queues. Lucky for us, there were only a dozen visitors to the park today so we sailed through the lengthy wait areas right to the cave entrance. The Luray Cave was really excellent. It is the (or at least one of the) oldest show caves, having been discovered on August 17, 1878. It was very well preserved for being so old and so densely decorated with numerous stalagmites and stalactites. It boasted some incredible reflecting pools and a working stalactite organ that played 37 different musical notes using hammers wired to tap in various cave formations to get different tones. Building an organ like this today would be a crazy proposition but it was constructed in the 1950s and has just been maintained ever since. The haunting melody played by the organ was insane to hear. Definitely a once in a lifetime thing.
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| This reference to Karst Topography was a blast to the past. We learned all about this when we were in Mammoth Caves back in Kentucky. |
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| Cave bacon! |
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| This is the stalactite organ. |
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| The hammer. |
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| The fried eggs. |
Following the cave, we visited the Toy Museum filled with old fashioned toys like Fisher Price toys, Cabbage Patch Kids and miniature train sets. We saw Raggedy Ann dolls, rocking horses, and lots of other really old toys.
The Carriage and Wagon Museum was our next stop and was really interesting. We saw some fancy carriages and some very, very old cars - some of the first automobiles ever made. It was nuts to see how small the cars started out and how quickly they got much bigger. We also saw one of the first bicycles, called velocipedes - initially built without brakes!
Our last pre-lunch stop was into a huge cedar maze. We had to traverse the maze to find the four secret words. We must have searched every corner of the maze to find the words but we ultimately prevailed, determining the secret phrase and then finding the exit.
After lunch, we explored the Pioneer Village. We started at the gem mining station with Alistair allocating some of this trip funds from the grandmas to purchasing a bag of fossils hidden in sand and rocks. He sifted the fossilized shells and sharks’ teeth like an expert and declared the $8 spent on this activity his best investment of the trip.
We then browsed through the old farmhouses, blacksmith workshop, and meeting house (church). We liked the museum displays on the Civil War, including the draft notice and the written agreement where one man paid another to take in his place in the army. I had no idea that this type of substitution was permitted.
Our campsite is just West of Washington DC at Bull Run Regional Park. We pulled in and got set up, all to the sound of gunshots. Turns out that the campground backs on to a shooting range! We’re not particularly bothered about this as we figure that it adds memorable atmosphere. We played a family Euchre tournament with Ali serving as score keeper and Takis distribution overseer. The winning team members of each hand were awarded a Takis. This system kept the game interesting (the boys love Takis!) but I think Ali took his cut very liberally and ingested many, many Takis over the course of the game.
Dinner and dessert were hamburgers with roasted s’mores over the campfire. We are looking forward to tomorrow as we continue to explore the surrounding area before heading into Washington DC in a few days from now.
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