After church, we went to Uncle Buck's for lunch. I had the ribs, the kids wanted silver dollar pancakes, and for an extra, they gave us cornbread with apple butter. Ironically, Stacy ordered ham and eggs. (She doesn't even eat breakfast at home) It was nothing fancy, but a nice hole in the wall restaurant. Though the service was good, Stacy thought it was pretty dirty.
Next up was the afternoon activity: Luray Caverns. There are many caves in and around the Shenandoah Valley, but this one is definitely the main attraction. Luray Caverns is the largest and most attended cave in the area, it also hosts a variety of activities and museums to keep you paying once you get there. The first thing we did was the Garden Maze. Stacy loves mazes and is fairly good at getting through them. One problem though, not only were we supposed to get through the maze, we had to find the 4 goal stands to stamp our mission card. We found Goal Stand #2 and then couldn't find another one before we finished the maze. So we backtracked the maze finding the other 3 goals in reverse order. The kids had a blast searching through the maze, trying to find the goals.
Once the maze was finished, it was time to head down into the caverns. We ended up in a fairly large group of people for our tour of the caverns. We had a young guide trying to make money for school. He was fun and did a good job guiding us through the caves. Because of the size of the crowd, it was often difficult to hear what he saying. As we worked our way through the caves, we saw a huge fallen stalactite and The Great Stalcpipe Organ. The organ is an keyboard attached to hammers throughout a large room in the cave. Each key makes a hammer hit a different sized stalactite. The guide declined to play the organ, saying he never learned. But then he turned on an automated song and we got to hear A Mighty Fortress is Our God on the Great Stalcpipe Organ. It was not loud, so you needed to be silent to really hear the song. Unfortunately with our large group, silence was nearly impossible. But it was still amazing hearing the organ far beneath the Earth's surface playing out to the glory of God.
While they enjoyed the caverns, the kids were a little nervous. They were happy to get out and see the wide open spaces once again. It was late afternoon and we still had much to see. There was a toy museum with a huge model train set and a Car & Carriage museum with a large assortment of wagons and automobiles. My personal favorite was the fudge shop. There was a museum of local artifacts from the 1700 & 1800s, including a 1536 Bible. There was a gem sluice, a series of water passages that you can buy a bag of dirt and run it through the sluice to find little gems. It would have been a lot of fun, but we were pressed for time so the kids didn't get to play in the water. Finally there was a little village with a blacksmith, school, barn, and old home. By this time we were practically running in order to see everything before church started.
We finished the day by attending the evening service of Page Valley Baptist Church, where we had the pleasure of witnessing 4 people be baptized. Three of them were from the same family. A young girl had gotten saved and then brought her parents to church where they also accepted Jesus as their Saviour. They also asked if we would mind singing a special, so Stacy and the kids sang Young David for the church.
We got back to the cabin, and by time we had eaten dinner it was bed time. It was a busy day, and our schedule was packed all week. There is a lot to see around the Shenandoah Valley, and we wanted to get in as much as possible.
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