Shenandoah National Park and Luray Caverns, VA

After my father's memorial service, I flew home through St. Paul, MN and brought my mom with me. In the 10 years we lived here, she has never had an opportunity to visit. She visited for two weeks and during that time we did some short trips in the area and a longer trip to visit Shelly & Drew and their family.

On our trip to Virginia to visit Shelly & Drew, we drove Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park and also visited Luray Caverns.

The weather for the trip did not cooperate though. The day we had set aside to leave, we had a nor'easter blow into the area. So it was cold and rainy and along the coast it was very windy.

Here are a few pictures of our trip.

My mom at the north entrance to the park.

Skyline Drive is over 109 miles long in the park.

The Dickey Ridge Visitor Center.

Inside the visitor center.

Good thing they had a fire going,

it was only in the low 40's.

A nice view of the ... FOG.

The clouds from the nor'easter had settled

down on the mountain. And with no breeze,

it wasn't going anywhere soon.

Nice-looking tree bark.

So after admiring the foggy fall colors

along the foggy Skyline Drive,

we left the foggy park and went down into the

Shenandoah Valley to Luray Caverns.

This is a seasonal display outside Luray Caverns.

So my mom and I took the self-guided tour into

the caverns. This is an old abandoned entrance.

This sign was at the old entrance.

The caverns were discovered in August, 1878.

One of the first formations we came to.

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A government billboard in the cavern.

My mom in front of one of the formations, for scale.

It is a constant 54 degrees in here.

Great for today, because it is in the low 40's outside.

Lots of weirdness down here.

These stalactites are real.

The stalagmites are a reflection.

That is a pool of water below.

More weird stuff.

They say it takes 120 years here to form

1 cubic inch of minerals.

For the tour, they gave us each an mp3 type of player.

You also get headphones to wear.

At certain points they have small signs with numbers

on them. You just punch in the numbers and then

listen to the information about what you are looking at.

Wow, pretty cool. They had some neat lighting.

I took some pictures with the flash,

and some without.

You are looking up.

Some rooms are over 10 stories high.

Lots of stalactites.

I remember that stalactites hang because the

word has the letter 'T' in it, and the letter 'T'

looks like it hangs.

Some of this stuff is huge.

This room is a few stories tall.

Everywhere you turn there are formations.

This one comes down from the very center

of the room.

The trail is paved and has handrails.

This is taken straight up from underneath.

This is cool, this organ is in a big room and

hooked up to stalactites with electronically

controlled mallets. Then they play the Stalacpipe

Organ and it makes great music.

They went around with a tuning fork to find the

perfect-sounding stalactites for this.

Here you can see how they hooked up

some of the stalactites to the organ.

This pool is used as a wishing well by customers.

It is blue-green due to the pennies thrown in.

They clear out the money from the pool and donate the

money to a different national charity every year.

They have donated thousands and thousands

of dollars over the years.

These are called the 'fried eggs'. They are stalagmites

that never formed.

After our visit to the caverns, we ate lunch and

headed up the Shenandoah Valley for the long drive

to Shelly and Drew's.