Good for a rainy day

I took the kids a while back to http://www.shenandoahcaverns.com/, I have never been there before so this was a first for me to. (yea I know slacking on my reviews). It took a couple of hours to get here, we broke up the trip by stopping for breakfast and coffee along the way. The only other cavern I have ever been through is Luray and its been a few years since my last trip through that so I was not sure what to expect.

We arrived and bought our tickets the lady at the counter had the patience of a saint, the man in front of us needed his tickets explained 3x to him and once to his wife. I would have lost it at this point but not this lady, she just kept repeating the information until everyone fully understood it. After I finally got to purchase my tickets we had 20 minutes or so to kill before the tour begun so we wandered around the gift shop (which by the way is the building you come in to buy your tickets and exit the cave from).
Only thing of note in the gift shop I would have to say was their lunch counter, it was one of those old time deals. It just screamed root beer floats and poodle skirts. We didn't eat from there, being still full from breakfast, but the group of kids that had taken over the bar looked like they were having a blast. I heard them ordering things like grilled cheeses.

The Terrorist is a little ham, even after the Princess informs me she is done with photos he is still asking and posing for more. Notice his camo, standard uniform for terrorist in training.

The terrorist highlight while waiting, when he went to the little boys room after entering through the big door there was saloon doors inside prior to reaching the bathroom. He of course had to hold the main door open for GOD and everyone to see. There was a set of stairs in the middle of the gift shop that lead down into the cavern, it was roped off. When they finally called for the tour to begin they had us line up at an elevator. This was good news.

Remember that commercial on t.v. a few years ago where that family was on vacation and they kept looking for the elusive smile from the daughter? Well the Princess has reached THAT stage. Nothing is cool enough, everything is boring. I haven't decided whether or not I am going to let her live to be a teenager!! I don't think that I can deal with the drama!

The elevator was one of those old fashioned ones with the lever for up and down, with pull to gates, my kids had never seen one of those before. Don't quote me here but I believe the tour guide said that they started using the elevator in the 30s prior to that they used the set of stairs that is now roped off.

This cracked me up, we rounded a corner of the cave and there sat in the middle of the cave, a mile under ground a telephone!

The tour of the cave was nice, I forgot to look at my watch so I cannot tell you exactly how long it took. I know that it was at least an hour. The highlight of this tour for me was the crystal formations in some of the rocks. Very cool! Looked like diamonds embedded in the walls. There
was one way in this cave and one way out.

This picture doesn't do it justice, but at least you can see all the sparkly things in the rock.


Not something I would want to do everyday, but I think everyone should at least have this experience once in their life. Its a nice ride to get there, even the day I went it was pouring down raining and traffic was still pretty easy going.

This was about as heavy as traffic got, after listening to the Princess whine about how bored she was and how I wouldn't hurry up and get her to where she was going, I threw my camera in the back seat and let her take pictures on the way to the caverns.