Luray Caverns

I have a follower that is so faithful she knows more about our trips than Granpa does !!  Hi, Marie!!

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Another long weekend; another road trip!  This time we're on our way up and across the Blue Ridge and Skyline Drive.  This will be a double bonus trip because after we see the caverns we will have a chance to visit the New Market Civil War battlefield and the famous Field of Lost Shoes.

The remnants of tropical storm Andrea drop rain on us all the way up this side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The rain slacks and stops as we turn west to cross over Skyline.  I love the skinny little side roads.  We're surprised around every twist and turn.  Now we're surprised by a detour.  (Oooh, I bet lil' Miss GPS is gonna have something to say about this!) 

The road they divert us onto is definitely skinny.  The twists and turns come more often as the road climbs the side of the mountain to the pass.  The sights and homes and vistas are fabulous!  I love detours - as long as the sun is up and there are other folks following the detour with us.  I just wish we could stop and take some pictures, but the only place to pull over is someone's driveway.  I don't particularly like people stopping in front of our home in Texas - even though we know log homes invite that kinda thing - so we're not doing that to others.  Just trust me:  detours in life can bring wonder and joy if you will simply go with the flow.

Ultimately we end up back on the main side road.  (Is that an oxymoron:  main side?)  We cut through the pass and are kinda surprised when we are then directed onto Interstate Highway 81.  Faithfully following lil' Miss' directions we exit at New Market and start another short climb up Massanutten Mountain to Luray. 

Massanutten is kind of a stand alone mountain rising out of a long, wide valley between the Blue Ridge mountains and the Shenandoah Mountains.  The three major cities in the valley are Harrisonburg, Staunton, and Lexington.  THIS is the famous Shenandoah Valley!  This is the inspiration for that beautiful song, Oh Shenandoah.  Wow, the stories behind THAT song are fabulous - especially if you're an old romantic like me.

The area surround Luray Caverns is really nice.  Blue sky breaks through just as we reach the top of Massanutten and see the parking area for the Caverns.  Boy, there's lots to do here besides spelunking:  there's the Car and Carriage Caravan Museum with things dating back to 1725, a ropes course, a Garden Maze that covers an entire acre, and the Luray Valley Museum that exhibits the Shenandoah culture back to the 1750's, as well as miles of hiking trails!  This is a two-day trip for sure if you want to do it all.  Caves are my thing, battlefields are Granpa's, so we're going to cut things really short but do both.

However, the entrance fee is $25 apiece.  The price includes everything though: car museum, the maze and the ropes course.  Hmmm.  Well, we'll pony up the cash and then decide what to do after we climb out of the cave.

As we wait in line there are display cases of artifacts from way back when.  This photo shows the actual guest register from 1879.  That's how long folks have been coming here to see this wonder.  Think about it:  there were no electric lights in 1879 to light this cave.  Can you imagine how spooky and dark it would have been?  And ladies didn't wear britches back then.  How crazy must it have been to crawl down into a cave with those long skirts?  (I woulda loved it!!)

After some legal wrangling, the caverns ended up belonging to the Luray Hotel and Cave Company, a subsidiary of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad.  The railroads were super powerful influencers back then with lots of money.  Hmmm, I wonder how they managed to win ownership?

In 1901, a Colonel Northcutt bought some land next door and built a home and sanitarium, Limair, a hospital for recuperating patients.  Accessing the cool, purified air from the caverns, he literally air-conditioned these buildings and claimed the title of the first air-conditioned house in the world. 

Then it's down into the cave for us - and about 20 other people in our group!  Concrete stairs, soft lighting, the cool clammy cave air so familiar...  And immediately we are in a huge area filled with stalactites and stalagmites.  (Stalactites hang "tight" to the ceiling, stalagmites grow like mice from the floor - at least that's how I remember which is which.)

The "x" back there shows the small crawl space original explorers used to get down in here in the beginning.  Now, there are absolutely no tight spaces and it's not really a cave so much as it is a series of caverns - reminds us of Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. 

To appreciate this scene you need a full size computer screen and maybe some muted lighting around you.  If you study it, and can do a little mind control on yourself, you will realize that what you're seeing is the ceiling reflected in perfectly still, perfectly pristine water.  This underground lake covers about an acre I think the guide said, but it's only a few inches deep.

They call this formation "bacon."  (Which reminds me, I think I'll have a BLT for lunch!)

The walkways are brick and there are handrails all the way.  These caves, er, caverns have been owned and successfully operated by the same family for over a hundred years.  I surely HOPE they've invested some money into making things nice and safe for their visitors!  However, it was right about here that the lights went out.  No.  Really.  Out.  As in original-cave-pitch-can't-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face-black!

It was so black-out dark that this is the best picture I could get of Granpa, even with a flash!  Amazing, huh.  Well, the poor tour guide keeps it together.  He's only in his 20's maybe and suddenly he's got twenty tourists with small children and feeble old folks to worry about.  They've not been too cooperative so far, and he doesn't know if any suffer from achluophobia (fear of the dark), but he keeps telling us not to worry, not to panic, the lights will come back on in a minute.  And he keeps telling us.  And keeps telling us.  

Finally the tour group guides in front of us and behind us get together with our guide.  Seems the phone lines to the top don't work either.  By this time everyone has their cell phones out using them as flashlights.  (Everyone but me that is, I happen to carry a flashlight in my purse... Mommas are like that.  Yeah they are!)  They decide to turn us around and head us back the way we came.  The only near-panic person was the tour guide.  I'm certain he suddenly felt a great weight of responsibility in a way he'd never experienced before.  He was a good guy and took this very seriously.

So we came out on top and they were giving vouchers for a return visit, but when I said we were from Texas they offered a full refund.  Granpa's really grinnin' now!  It seems the power was out throughout the entire town of Luray.  We never did find out why.  We just hopped in the car and drove down the mountain to the battlefield.  Granpa grinnin' all the way.