Skyline Cavern

On November 5th, a Saturday, we went on another little excursion. Our idea was to travel from our resort near Front Royal, VA to Luray Caverns near Luray, VA. Boy, were we naive. The ride to the caverns was lovely, but the lines out front to enter the caverns was at least a block and half long. We drove through the parking lot and left. I did get a neat shot of their "Love" sign. (You remember, "Virginia is for lovers.")

Since we had had such fun at the Front Royal visitor's center earlier in the week, we decided to head to downtown Luray to check out their visitor center. We were very glad that we did. This visitor center is also in a train station. They put a wonderful display about railroading in the area in one half of the building. We spent a lot of time looking at the display and enjoying it.

They had a really cool painting on the floor to show where the rail lines connected other towns to Luray. The explanation signs were just great.








They also had cool model train display of some of the areas around Luray.

We even went outside to look at the rails. They are still active even though the station is not.

















Our favorite part of the station was the office. One of the displays in it explained how messages were passed to moving trains from the station.

We walked to a couple of stores in downtown Luray after leaving the Visitor Center. I was pleasantly surprised to see a cookie jar that I have in the store. It belonged to my Great-Grandma Sutlif, then to my Grandma Ridall so it is very special to me.
















After having some yummy Hershey's ice cream, we decided to check out the lines at Luray. They were STILL very long. We agreed to head back toward the campground and stop at Skyline Caverns if the lines there were reasonable. There were no lines so we were off on our adventure. It was wonderful. You can learn more about it here: http://www.skylinecaverns.com/





This is the first flowstone formation we saw. They make it more beautiful by bathing it in colored light.

 I thought the bulge in this photo looked like a man's head.

The shapes the water had carved as it created the cavern are beautiful. You can see the heads of the people in the bottom of the photo for scale.

Stalagmites.

A very large flowstone formation that looks like an eagle.

Does anyone see a Basset Hound in this picture?

Anthodite crystals. Look at this link for more information on them: http://legacy.earlham.edu/~brizeja/caveformations.htm

It was a really neat cavern and I am glad we went inside. I even found a penny pressing machine so I got to add to my collection.