Trip to TN - Day 1

On Wednesday, June 29th, we started our trip down to Nashville.  Chris planned out our route and did all the driving (yeah!).  Our first stop was in Virginia at Luray Caverns.  

 I got this blurb from their website:

" Since discovery in 1878 by a tinsmith and a local photographer, visitors by the millions have made Luray Caverns the most popular cave in Eastern America and an internationally acclaimed destination.  4,000,000 centuries in the making beneath Virginia’s storied Shenandoah Valley, this “must see” U.S. Natural Landmark awaits your discovery."

"...cathedral-sized rooms with ceilings 10 stories high. Enormous chambers are filled with towering columns, shimmering draperies and crystal-clear pools.  Also in this subterranean wonderland, “Hear Rocks Sing” as you experience the haunting sounds of the world’s largest musical instrument, The Great Stalacpipe Organ. Completely unique are the beautiful tones created by this one-of-a-kind instrument, which makes music of concert quality from the surrounding stalactite formations covering more than three acres."

I do have to say the "organ" was pretty cool.  They hooked it up to different stalactite's throughout this one area in the cavern and it would play by hitting the stalactites, of which were all different sounding.

This picture does not do the "coolness" of this justice.  It's stalactite's that are being reflected by water on the bottom half of the picture.  It looked like a little underwater city.

This is the "famous" fried egg formation - and you do have to admit - it does look like one

Took a quick break after the caverns and you can see Makenna with her prized pink bracelet that daddy got for her at the gift shop.

Then it was off to the maze.  I think we did better at this maze than we did at the one at Iron Kettle back in October of last year.  We didn't find all the "spots" we were supposed to in order to get money off something in the gift shop but we found two out of four - which was pretty good - for us.  Plus we had to get going to our next stop.

The next part of the trip was taking a scenic ride through Shenandoah National Park.  The mountains were great to look at and there were many places along the way you could stop and pull over and look out.  We probably stopped about six or seven times and realized we could be there all night if we kept doing that so we finally opted to just finish driving through.

Makenna was calling family and friends on her phone to tell them of our trip

Even though these mountains were definitely beautiful to look at, I couldn't help but compare it to the French and Swiss Alps that we saw back in 2009 and these just didn't measure up.

Makenna is now taking a picture on her toy phone

We ended up eating dinner at a diner at the park, and then continuing our trip.  When we realized, that we could be here a long time, as the speed limit was only 35, we took the first opportunity to get off and continued on our trip.