“I hear her voice in the morning as she calls me” saying ‘what are we doing for breakfast?’ as soon as Karen woke up. The Mimslyn Inn might be a decent Hotel, but it falls into the class that doesn’t provide a free breakfast. Instead, it offers an expensive breakfast dining room. The answer was to head to Maccie D’s as it was next to our first destination which were to be the Luray Caves.
We both had the Sausage Egg McMuffins as they were on offer as 2 for $5 and a large drink each. The bill came to much less than the costs for some oats for one in the Hotel but somewhat less healthy.
I was a bit ‘meh’ about the caves, but Graham had recommended them overnight. We bought the tickets and headed down a very long slope to the entrance. We had been told that it would take one hour to walk through and most of it was evenly paved.
What greeted us blew me away from first sight. It was both remarkable and spectacular. Superlatives cannot do it justice. I have been in caves all over the world, but this was better than all the rest put together. Right from the start I said to Karen that even Disney could not outdo what nature had done herself.
It felt ethereal and out of this world. As we were early there very few other people around which made it even more special.
The colour, magnitude of everything alone the amazing variety of stalactites and stalagmites in vast caves I cannot think of how to describe.
Bravo mother nature bravo and well done to who discovered them and also to who had the foresight to make them so easily accessible.
If anyone is ever within striking distance of these caves then just make the effort to see them, you will not be disappointed.
I think the last time I was this awestruck by nature was when I first saw Bryce Canyon in Utah.
On the way out of the caves we sat for a while watching a young family of ground hogs playing nearby. To be honest we were not sure what they were and had to ask some other tourists who said they were groundhogs, or we might call them wood chucks. That set us off repeating ‘How much wood would a wood chuck chuck’ etc etc.
Our ticket also included admission to a Toy Museum next door (not very well done) and a Car Museum which only had cars that were about 100 years old. This was more interesting but when you have seen one you have almost seen them all.
By now the sun was very hot and so we welcomed a 15-minute drive in the car with the air con to the entrance to the Shenandoah National Park. We bought an ‘America the Beautiful’ annual pass for the parks as we plan to do another whole load of them again next June before the pass expires. It cost $80 whereas admission today alone would have been $30 and we knew we intended to be in the park again tomorrow.
For today though the plan was to drive the Northern section of the Skyline Drive and then return on the faster highway outside the park.
The drive was beautiful and right on the ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains which true to their name were giving off a blue hue in the distance. There were many gaps and vantage points on either side of the road. We pulled in and stopped at a few. Sadly, we knew that Photos would never do justice to the views we were being treated to.
There were millions of pine trees and there were all clumped together without gaps. I tried very hard to find one all on its lonesome and certainly none of the women I spoke to went by the name of June.
So instead we made do with several repeats of singing of the Laurel & Hardy classic. Whenever we were looking down into the Shenandoah valley though we switched to ‘Take me Home Country Roads’.
We realised that we hadn’t been given a map when we entered so had no idea how far along the Skyline we were or where the visitors centre was. After about 20 miles of good but very twisty roads we came to one and were pleased to visit the rest rooms.
We went into the visitor’s centre hoping to find a drink but with no luck. We asked for a map, but they had apparently run out everywhere in the park of them apart from ones printed in Mandarin. We took one. Fortunately, the map section was in English, but the guide parts were incomprehensible to us.
We sat in the glorious sunshine which was a little less powerful up the mountain and had a make do picnic of a few snacks we had gathered over the past few days. Then we headed out of the park in search of drinks.
Driving back, I saw the best bumper sticker of the trip so far on a Tesla which read ‘I bought this before Elon went crazy’ which amused me.
I decided to head back to Luray which I reasoned must have a coffee shop somewhere that was both open and acceptable. It didn’t and Karen may have mentioned we should have gone to another town instead just the once.
Plan B was to go to Walmart and get some provisions instead including something we could heat up in the Hotel microwave for dinner.
We failed on that as well as it was only a small Walmar with a very small food section. Karen did not fancy anything on offer. We bought some porridge for breakfast and left before I realised, we didn’t have any milk to make it with.
I really didn’t want to go back and instead we went next door to the Dollar General where I got some milk.
Back at the hotel we went and same on the veranda at the front after getting some much-needed hot drinks from the lobby.
Karen decided she didn’t want to go out for dinner nor get a takeaway and instead would make do with porridge instead. I wasn’t keen on going out again and so I did the same. It kind of made up for having McMuffins for breakfast in our minds.
After this we took the laptop and the remains of our wine and went outside and sat on the back balcony this time and watched the penultimate episode of ‘Race Across the World’. It was lovely and warm and peaceful sitting there. It was around 9pm and starting to get dusk when it ended and so we went back to our room as Karen was concerned about getting bitten
It had been another really good day where in our own words ‘We had done some Stuff’.
Almost heaven, West Virginia,
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.
Life is old there, older than the trees,
Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze.
