Caverns

A couple of weeks ago, we drove about 100 miles down to the Shenandoah National Park.  It was pretty amazing.  In just 100 miles you quickly transition from the built up cities of DC and the suburbs to wide open spaces with rolling hills. 

We bought a group-on to the Shenandoah caverns.  Turns out the group on was a good deal if you had 4 adults, but with two adults and 2 kids, we actually paid a little more for the group-on than if we had just bought the tickets when we got there.  Oh well. 

The caverns are privately owned, which is pretty cool.  I would love it if I owned a bunch of land and discovered these enormous caverns one day!  It did not look too promising to start with.  We showed up right when it opened, but a couple of tour buses had evidently called ahead and were able to start their tour ahead of time.  So we had 30 minutes to kill in a very touristy gift shop/waiting area.  Fortunately the girls didn't break anything and eventually our names were called.

Our group was about 8 people, mainly adults but one kid that was probably about 14 or 15.  Bella and Erin were easily the two youngest.  You take an elevator to the start of the caverns, and they are very proud of this elevator, it features prominently in all their advertisements.  One other interesting part was that our guide was training someone else.  At first, I was hoping that we didn't need a guide because I thought it would be fun to explore on our own.  However, our guide was a fun lady that definitely increased the enjoyment of the experience. 

The caverns were unlike anything I had ever experienced.  My experience with caving had been limited to the Adirondacks and a boy scout trip we took to some caves in the catskills.  On both of those occasions, it was not particularly comfortable, you spent most of your time crawling and hunched over.  Also, the only light you had was a flashlight, so you really couldn't see much.  Here, the caverns were enormous.  In some places the ceiling was 45 - 50 feet high.  Also, they had filled in much of the cave floor with gravel, so it was a pretty easy stroll.  Best of all, they had installed pretty extensive lighting, so you could really take it all in. 

Bella wanted to run off on her own at first, the guide cautioned her that if she ran off the Cave Spiders would get her!  This did not have the intended effect.  She thought it would be great to meet the Cave Spiders! 

The other interesting dynamic is that there was a bit of a war between regular tours of 10 people or so per group and the large "bus tours" of perhaps 80 people at once.  We wouldn't have learned about this except for our guide training her replacement.  Apparently, most of the bus tours are foreigners who either don't speak English or pretend not to.  Consequently, during our tour, we kept passing elements of this same bus tour.  Some of them had broken off and were significantly behind the rest of the group.  Our guide let us know that often these "bus people" (A term I coined), will try to hang back far enough so that they can go on another tour.  Our guide was very adamant that the bus people had to keep up with their group.  I then started a running joke that all the problems and issues they have in the cave were due to bus people.  It got a few laughs. 

What was pretty neat was that the cavern was neatly divided into certain rooms and it was spectacular, particularly considering that it was entirely natural.  The caverns were very much alive too, because the dripping of the water deposited materials in Stalactites and Stalagmites.  It was just the right amount of time, the girls were pretty much ready for it to be over after about 1.5 hours, but you didn't feel like you were ripped off. 

Interestingly, our admission included free entry into a number of other connected exhibits.  The first was a series of window displays from the 1800s and 1900s.  Before TV, it was common for families to entertain themselves by checking out intricate window displays.  Although I thought it would be lame, some of the exhibits were really well put together.  It was a good change of pace for the girls too, they could check these out at their own pace. 

Next, we walked down the hill to this enormous warehouse building that was entirely devoted to parade floats.  These floats were enormous, and we were the only people in the building.  I thought it was kind of creepy, but Tuyen loved it.  The final exhibit was called the "Big Yellow Barn".  Probably better described as the "Expensive Giftstore"  There wasn't a whole lot to this area, but there was an outside exhibit with a lot of ornery goats that kept the girls amused.  All in, I consider it a successful visit.  We definitely want to go back to Shenandoah Park and check out Skyline Drive some more.