Virginia 2021 - Day 2: Rain, Luray Caverns

It was overcast and rainy this morning, so we slept late and then relaxed around the house while making plans for later in the week.

Around the time I was ready for post-breakfast coffee, Sabrina noticed that a tractor had shown up to collect the hay bales, so we sat out on the patio to watch and discuss the operator's technique.

We'd had a light breakfast, and there was a break in the rain for a few hours, so we opted to try the winery that's at the end of the road, about 2 miles from the house.

We snuck out between trailers-full of hay, so we didn't get stuck behind the tractor.

The winery (Early Mountain Vineyards) turned out to be super fancy, and we had under an hour to enjoy the view outside before the rain returned. We managed to squeeze in a flight and charcuterie board, anyway.

After sort-of having wine for lunch, we popped over to Yoder's Country Market to load up on snacks and lunch options for the remainder of the week. Also they had carpenter bee traps for sale, which was amusing to us because I just built something like this at home, last week.

Earlier in the day, the forecast suggested that it might have just been scattered showers today, but it turned into a steady rain all afternoon. By the time we left Yoder's it was clear that we wouldn't be spending any more time outside today. We debated turning it into a winery/brewery crawl day, but ended up enacting the Rain Day plan of some cavern-touring.

This required crossing over Shenandoah park, which meant driving through the clouds for a few miles of curves and switchbacks, in the rain. Sabrina was thrilled that she offered to drive today.

We settled on the Luray Caverns, after evaluating five options (the others being Skyline Caverns, Shenandoah Caverns, Endless Caverns, and Grand Caverns). Sabrina was not interested in seeing all five (or even more than one).

I think we just missed the tail end of the crowd, as there were quite a few cars in the parking lot, but almost nobody else in the caverns with us.

The self-guided tour took about an hour, and included 15 to 20 points of interest, described in the provided pamphlet.

I don't know how long it takes for the rain to percolate through from above, but it seemed like it was raining in the caverns, in a few places.

I think my favorite features were the reflecting pools that created nearly perfect mirror images of the stalactites.

With the only sources of light being just above the water, the effect was almost like an optical illusion.

Sometimes the lighting made it almost impossible to take a photo, but I managed to get Sabrina in a few shots, for scale.

If it were a busier day, blog-wise, I'd probably cull half of these photos. But, here we are. This is not an Adventure Vacation.

This part was interesting, although it wasn't exactly reassuring to learn that a large chunk of rock had fallen from the ceiling during an earthquake (thousands of years ago) while underground; it definitely made me wonder "what would happen if there were an earthquake right now?"

We've been on... I dunno, maybe half a dozen cave/cavern tours, but I think this is the first one I've seen that contained an integrated electronic pipe organ, using rubber hammers on geologic features and electronic pickups. The pamphlet said something about live performances, at times.

This bit was called "the wishing well", for obvious reasons. We discussed whether or not they appreciated the paper money contributions, and whether or not that missed the point of the "wishing well" concept.

Sabrina pointed out that there was also a small bottle of hand sanitizer floating in there. It was probably the most valuable offering, at some point last year.

They made it very obvious that the pool of pocket change is actually a charitable contribution, which might explain the paper money, I guess?

When we emerged back at the surface, the rain had subsided, but the hills were still cloaked in clouds, to the east.

I thought that maybe the fog wouldn't be as bad on the trip back over the ridge, but if anything it might've been worse.

We were rather hungry, as we hadn't really had lunch, so we stopped on the way back to the farm, at Tap 29 Brewery (which is also Prince Michel winery/vineyard). They had beer and cider flights, which paired nicely with our pub dinner.

Tomorrow is going to be hot again, and we're mostly recovered from yesterday's hillclimbing, so we're headed back to Skyline Drive for some more hiking tomorrow. I suspect (hope?) we'll pay more attention to the elevation gains listed for each trail, this time.

The car has a full tank, and we're properly equipped to bring lunch with us this time, so we should be able to really abuse our legs and hiking poles while escaping the heat again.