Shenandoah Valley WOW!

We arrived at Shenandoah Valley Campground on Monday afternoon with plans to stay two nights and one day. We love this campground - it is in a beautiful little valley and right next to a little river that even has a waterfall. Ellyn says it's her all-time favorite campground. Geoff said that Ellyn says that about every campground we go to.

Here's all we've done in our one day, here...

1. Our plan for a pre-breakfast bike ride around the campground scuttled by the flat tire on my bike. That made getting my bike tire and inner tube replaced as the first thing on our agenda. It was easy to find a bike shop in Staunton - about 15 min. away. The bike guy fixed the bike quickly but not so quick that we didn't have time to pick up a few sundries in the bike store.
   
2. After the bike was done, we took advantage of being in Historic Staunton to walk around the charming small city. There are many 19th century buildings and we had fun using the Walking Tour Map to learn about each of them. We had lunch at a great Mexican restaurant.
   
3. Our next stop was Grand Caverns. We've always enjoyed visiting Caverns through the years - though it was even more fun when Logan and Brian were still traveling with us. We were totally impressed by this cavern - really nice big rooms with plenty of undamaged stalactites and was unique in three ways: A) The limestone plates in this cavern ran vertically 2) There are about 30 or more "shield"features - a typical cave only has a few and 3) The cave has been open to the public since 1806 - more than 200 years ago. Both union and confederate civil war soldiers visited the cavern. And it was the custom back then for visitors to sign the walls - more than 200 signatures have been authenticated to be civil war soldiers - we saw a few of them.
   
4. We then returned back to the Campground and did laundry. However, the special aspect of this laundry room was that it was right next to the hot tub room - with six hot tubs. We relaxed in the hot tub while the laundry was being completed.
   
5. Next, a very quick dinner so we could get to the DJ entertainment for the second night. There's a deck with lots of red, white and blue colored lights and a DJ each night. Other than the campground owner family, there were only a few other people but we still had lots of fun doing the two step and Geoff even did Kareoke.
   

That's a pretty busy day. We really like it here and want to come back - hopefully when the weather is a bit warmer and we can go in the river or the pool and we still need to drive on the blue ridge parkway.

Photos to follow on Geoff's flickr page - please see link on the left.


Tomorrow, we plan to drive most of the way back to New York. We'll see many of you in the next few week as we visit the NE. See you soon.