July 15, 2012 Natural Bridge, Virginia

We drove down to Natural Bridge to see the dino land which is giant fiberglass dinosaurs battling civil war figures.

We were excited when we saw this dinosaur in Glasgow on the way in a park. Made by the same artist, Mark Cline. We got there and found out that dino land is now closed. It also included a haunted house that burnt down, so they closed the whole thing. Boo, and you can’t see it from the road.  We were very disappointed. So we paid $50 to see the natural bridge and other attractions. You know it is lame when it costs a lot and has way too many other attractions with it. The bridge is beautiful. Thomas Jefferson owned it for awhile, he had a cabin retreat here.

As long as you don’t look too closely and see the highway over the top. At night they even have a light show on the bridge. We did not stay for it. Looking up under the bridge.

George Washington supposedly carved his initials on the bridge. They outlined it for us in case we did not see it. There was also a butterfly pavilion, here it is in it’s entirety. Pretty lame.

A toy museum, that was kind of interesting, mostly toys I never played with or were after our time. They had numerous dioramas with toy soldiers depicting civil war battles. I did want this batman penguin commando for the bus.

The wax museum was sort of ok. The tour of the factory sounded interesting, but the artist making the figures is only there Mon-Fri. I liked this though, pouring a melted face into a mold for another face. They made their own carvings, no molds of peoples faces, some of them looked like real life. George Bush looked just as dazed in wax as he did in life, but others did not even resemble them. The best was the couple of wax tourists looking intently into one of the displays and the guy who burped at the still when you walked by. Here is their Indian village.

I like the Indians camp kitchen. Some vines.

Also included was a cavern tour. This is the only formation in the cavern, the rest were bare rooms, but it was nice and cool in there. It was about 90 degrees outside, very humid. John located this great attraction, Foamhenge. It was free, and probably the best. Also made by the same artist that made the dinosaurs.

Stonehenge, made from Styrofoam.  Here is the artists warning against defacing the sculpture.

He has one theory that Merlin levitated all the rocks. He used the face of an old friend for Merlin. His friend asked him to use his face in one of his art pieces, so Mark made a mask of his face two days after he died.

Foamhenge is cool. A field of flowers by Foamhenge.

The James river. There used to be a 20 mile canal that ran from the James to a near by river in the 1800’s for boats carrying goods. This is one of the old locks. The quit using it when the railroads were cheaper to transport cargo on.