Day One - Off to Shenandoah

Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Early this morning we said good bye to Noelle's family and set off in the motor home on our special birthday journey heading first to the Shenandoah Caverns in Virginia.

By 3:00 in the afternoon we were at 

Where we quickly set up the motor home 

and walked over to the Shenandoah Caverns for a tour

arriving just after a group tour rode down the elevator.   The cashier quickly called for someone to take us down and show us the little bit we would have otherwise missed and connect us with the group.  They were enjoying this very colorful spot highlighting stalactites and stalagmites with rainbow lights.  It tended to look like a creche scene.  Noelle had brought with her two different "flat Stanley" type pictures - a frog from her orthodontist and a picture of her church called Westie.  Both were encouraging pictures taking pictures of vacation spots you visit and posting them.  So we immediately got out the camera and did this one of Noelle with Westie.

This was Noelle's first experience with caverns and we felt afterward this was a great one for that - probably one of the better ones we've been through with excellent lighting and a tour guide eager to answer questions and allow plenty of time for everyone to enjoy each of the stops.  Pictures are never real good in cave conditions, at least ones I attempt, but we did get some good ones and bemoaned the ones that didn't come out like the ones of the excellent "bacon" we saw throughout.  (this cave is well known for its bacon and how real it looks)This one is very blurred but at least gives an idea of how good it was.

At this "waterfall" we managed to get a pretty good picture of Noelle with the frog from her orthodontist.

Here we could see a stalagtite and stalagmite almost meeting.  The guide told us it would probably be 25 years before it finally happened which shows how slowly these things grow.

After finishing the hour plus tour of the cavern, we enjoyed wandering the Yesteryear series of department store windows during the holidays in the late 19th and early 20th century.  They sure brought back memories of when I was a youngster and made trips with my parents to downtown Detroit and the J. L. Hudson store that always had elaborate window displays at Christmas time. 

There were some other items created by Earl Hargrove, Jr. who did nine of the inauguaral parades (he died last year)

and created a huge variety of floats that were used in many other different parades including the Rose Bowl Parade.  These huge teddy bears are an example

From there we walked over to the American Celebration building (all the flags along the walkway were from one of the Olympics held here in the US)

where we were treated to an opportunity to see many of the floats created by Earl Hargrove, Jr. who is shown in this picture working on a float

 Out in front was a 40 foot rendition of the Statue of Liberty that was also used on a float.

The parade floats were awesome!!!!!  So huge and so detailed.  Many were used over and over with only slight changes.  We agreed that all this one needed was a bottle of Coke -- remember the bear ads?

Here Noelle takes on a pose

And this one even had a spot where you could climb up and pretend to be in a parade and waving to everyone from the caboose.

This is the engine on the front end of the float (yes, they were all enormous)

We discovered there was a back side to this one

where you could actually sit in the seat that the driver of the float used to operate it.

 WOW!! That has to have been a tough job!

At the entrance to the building, was this throne - a section of a float for queens to ride in for parades.Noelle had fun playing a queen

Both Frog and Westie got pictures taken in that spot too.

We had a lot of fun trying to find the 26 animals in this relief that was on the side of that float

Sadly all the buildings closed at 5:00 so we were not able to spend any more time wandering them. But on our walk back to the campground we passed this Cootie (remember playing that game?) that I just had to get a shot of.  We were surprised to realize it is such an old game that Noelle never even heard of it

I fixed dinner

after we walked back and then we enjoyed watching our favorite shows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune before calling it a night knowing we had to be up early in the morning to continue our drive to Virginia Beach.