After leaving the busy world of Washington DC it was lovely to escape to the mountains of Virginia. Known as Shenandoah, the area is a National Park, and is well known for the Skyline Drive, a 105 mile drive across the mountain range.
Spotted on both sides of the mountains are many caverns, each owned and operated independantly, although many believe they are all connected as they are impossible to navigate in the furthest reaches of each cavern and highly likely there are many caverns that we have not yet found.
I stayed in the town of Luray, a quiet town on the western edge of Shenandoah. Fortunately they also had a large Ford dealership, and as much as I fell in love with a very special Roush tuned Ford Mustang designed for the race track, they did a stunning job fixing the damage caused back in Colorado Springs from the table incident, giving the car a full service and new fluids all round. The car drove like a new car afterwards and was definitely worth getting them to look it over.
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My next Mustang???!While my car was being serviced they kindly drove me down the down to the local caves, Luray Caverns. This was the first of 3 caverns I visited, probably the most spectacular of them all and guided by an audio tour meant that you could take your own time while travelling through.
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These caverns are hundreds of thousands of years in the making - and strangely all 3 caverns I visited were discovered in the late 1800's, all by children around the ages of 11 to 14 who were playing on their parent's farmland.
Luray is also home to the world's largest instrument, all 3 and 1/2 acres of it and 5 miles of electrical wiring. The Luray Stalacpipe Organ - an electric organ which operates rubbr tipped hammers to the press of each individual key. These hammers in turn hit a stalactite somewhere in the cavern. It is quite incredible, stalactites naturally have a sound when hit, and they have wired up this organ so that it may play music, which we were given a demonstration of. I bought the CD as I was impressed with it, and here is one of the tracks from it, to give you an idea of how it sounds: (Tip, you may need to turn speakers up, it is a little muted thanks to there being no sound resonance in the caves)
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From Luray I collected my car and headed out to the northern section of the Skyline Drive, a lovely evening drive.
The next day was horribly overcast so I went to visit another cavern, Endless Caverns. It was a personal guided tour, and they were very friendly there as I got there early before the tour started - not that it mattered as I was the only person on it!
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Endless has a very friendly atmosphere, and it has bats too! Only little fellas and they were just coming out of hibernation, so most of them were sleeping, although a few were flying around stretching their wings.
Caverns are caverns at the end of the day so I have posted a few more pictures here.
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The following day the weather had improved a bit and I hit the southern end of the Skyline drive. I love how as the snow melts and all the rain water washes down there are literally hundreds of mini waterfalls along the side of the road. There were lots of eagles and hawks, deer and plenty of animals minding their own business.
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The final caverns I visited were the Shenandoah Caverns, another guided tour in a group of many people - by far the least spectacular and smallest of them all. This is why there is even less said!
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