Day 16 of William's visit - part 1

Sunday July 2 -  Sarah cooked a wonderful breakfast for all of us. The feeding of the 8! But we didn't want to take too much time because we want another outing of course.

Sarah said she would like to see the Luray Caverns, the largest caverns in the eastern United States. We had not been either and were happy to see them too. The drive took about half an hour or so and we arrived shortly after 10 am. 

It was good that we were early and buying the tickets didn't take long. Soon we were already on our tour. James and I were surprised and amazed. We have been in caves before and they are all a bit different. But this is really a "must see". 

We had a pamphlet with numbers which we found on the tour. Sarah would read to us the explanations. It was all very well done.

The photos are NOT doing it any justice. 

Again, some of the photos were taken by Sarah. William "borrowed" my phone when we were at the "Dream Lake". It is the largest body of water in Luray Caverns covering 2500 square feet and creates the illusion of a small sea of underwater stalagmites, but that's just the perfect mirror reflection of the ceiling. It looked very enchanted. 

This is the "Fallen Stalactite" which fell from the ceiling during a massive earthquake 7000 years ago, the last such disturbance of this magnitude in the eastern region. 

The "Wishing Well" is the deepest body of water in the caverns with a depth of six feet at the center. Visitors from all over the world of course through coins into it. I could not believe seeing even paper money. At the end of the year, two to three feet of coins will cover the bottom. The money is collected annually and distributed to different charities. It said on the board: grand total to date $1,180,268.32 

The "Fried Eggs" were two stalagmites accidently sheared during enlargement of the tunnel. Early traditions was to rub the eggs for luck but they discourage that now. Admire without touching!

And just like that we came to the end of the tour which took at least an hour. It was self-guided (with those numbers on places which were explained in the brochure) and it was truly amazing. Unfortunately I can do nothing in this blog to really show it.

Included in the fee to the caverns were other places too like this Car & Carriage Caravan Museum and the Shenandoah Heritage Village.

We went into the Car & Carriage Museum and the boys really liked it. It was very well done. No photos from inside.

Sarah had packed a picnic and we found tables and benches.

When the picnic was done the boys found something to climb on. Surprise, surprise!

We put the bags back into the car and went into the next attraction: Shenandoah Heritage Village. The Museum was small but very interesting too.

After the museum you came to the gift shop where you could buy sacks in different sizes with sand and surprises. We spent some time at the "Gem Mining Sluice", a hands-on lesson how pioneer prospectors would bring gold and other valuable gems to the world.

Sarah went around pouring the sand from the bag into the boys' trays and they washed until they found their surprises. 

Sarah had bought two sacks. The large sack had all sorts of gems in it. William and Caleb both had a large quarz besides smaller stones and were very happy with it. The small sack seemed to have mainly coins in it. They came from the caverns' wishing well and were all from foreign countries. Sarah and I thought this "repurposing" was quite clever.

Only Owen was disappointed. He had not found anything which he had liked ... a disappointed prospector. We all were so sorry for him but what to do?

Sarah found a solution. On the way back to the cabin was an icecream place. Owen was the one who was allowed to choose first and he was the only one who could choose two flavors. Everybody thought that was very fair and everybody was happy.

What an amazing day so far. And it is only 2 pm. More to come.