Notes from Underground

Okay, the title is probably more clever than the rest of the post is going to be, since I'm describing one of the older tourist destinations on the East Coast, Luray Caverns. As I noted in yesterday's post, after her descent into an old gold mine in Cripple Creek, Colorado, Sarah could no longer plead claustrophobia on caves, and she herself decided she wanted to see one on this trip to the Valley. And being a well-brainwashed product of advertising campaigns, she decided it had to be Luray Caverns, the most famous of the Eastern Seaboard caves, and one promoted with the ferocity that used to be devoted to "See Rock City" in the American South, except instead of painting barns they just have incessant billboards and TV commercials on kids' channels.

As it happens, neither Tam nor I had been to Luray, so we were fine with that. I grew up in the Ozarks, which like the Shenandoah Valley is full of limestone karst formations and therefore really neat calcite caves with lots of stalactites, stalagmites, and such, but because I had seen plenty as a kid I never got into the ones around here, which tend to be a tad pricey. Then once I had a kid (the obvious reason to go), she long said she didn't want to because it would be too creepy. She no longer thinks so.

I think I've mentioned that Sarah is really fond of her new camera, and that I put an 8 gigabyte memory card in it. (Actually, I see I only mentioned the 4 gigs I put in originally. I bought her 8 gigs on sale at the Harrisonburg Wal-Mart, so she'd have all the memory she could hope to need. For now.)

She took 417 pictures in the cave. Yes, that says 417. I have not edited them all yet, or even looked at them all yet, not to mention the videos and stills I took (a mere 147 for the day, but many of them video, of which probably a bit over 100 were in the cave). So, don't expect a Flickr or YouTube upload imminently: tomorrow's a work and school day. How things have changed since the days of film. Just take everything you see, and cull the duds later.

So the above shot is just a random one, I think one of reflected stalactites in water.

Anyhow, Luray is every bit the touristy place you expect, but it's a great and impressive cave, and worth the visit. Sarah loved it, and so did we.

Earlier in the day we met over breakfast with Moira Gallagher, daughter of Tam's old friends Tom and Cyndi Gallagher (who are also Sarah's godparents). Moira's a senior at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg where we made our base camp for this Valley trip. She hadn't seen Sarah in several years so was of course impressed.

The cave made the return trip a bit more than just a return trip, as coming down via Skyline Drive helped the first day. We try to make a three-day weekend not just two days of travel and one day of visit, but three days of stuff.

Fact I didn't know: there are no bats in Luray. It has no natural openngs to the outside, only the commercial entrance discovered in the 1870s, so there is no natural fauna, there being no food sources or uncontrolled access, though salamanders and other marine life are sometimes found, but not year-round. So it's a batless cave.