October 31, 2017 New Market, Virginia

We are camped at Endless Cavern RV resort. Here is the bus in our site. They have  Endless Cavern at the campground, but we decided to go see Shenandoah Caverns instead since AAA recommended them instead. Here is the beginning of the tour at Shenandoah. The sign says The formations in this cave are protected by Virginia Law. A fine of $500 will be imposed upon any persons damaging or taking formations from this cavern. 

They seem to be into elves and gnomes here. The formations are really intricate and colorful.

These are cave bacon. The bottom one is one of the largest in the world. 

                                         The flow stone is really cool. Stalactites and mites.

Some of the formations soda straws, a stalactite almost touching a stalagmite, cool texture, glittery draperies, cave popcorn, a tiny stalagmite, more cool texture, tites and mites and this acron thing is from a museum we went to afterwards. It is a bullet removed from a soldier in the Civil War, he lived but saved the slug and had it made into this.  

The previous glittery formation is this huge formations. They did special light effects on it.  They were into the colored lights. This is rainbow lake, the formations on the ceiling were reflected in the still water of the lake. I think it may have looked better with out the colored lights, but they didn't ask me. 

The huge column with John is pictured in the photo to the right coming from the ceiling. After the caverns we went to the Virginia museum of the Civil War.

 It covered the battle at New Market. It took place on the Bushoug farm. The family hid in the stone cellar during the battle. The troops turned the house into a hospital for the wounded after the battle. This battle was different in that 250 cadets participated. They were to be back up troops but accidently ended up on the frontline. 10 died, but they did repel the Union soldiers. 45 of the cadets were wounded. Many more of the regular soldiers. There was so much carnage in these hand to hand battles. The museum was interesting and very depressing. They had a nice gun display and had clothing and artifacts from the actual battle. The field was a wheat field but turned into a muddy quagmire. This cannon was left behind by the union troops when the retreated. 

The view of the Shenandoah valley from the overlook by the battlefield. Beautiful downtown historic New Market. There are many historic buildings, it looks colonial. 

The phone booth is actually a tiny library. Take a couple, leave a couple. Back at camp I took a hike, which ended up much longer than I had thought it would be, but very beautiful. This is a view from above the campground of the Shenandoah valley. 

October 30, 2017 Burnsville, WV to New Market, Virginia

It snowed last night higher up. Today we drove 100 miles over many, many mountain passes in West Virginia into Virginia. It took 5 hours. Very steep, wet roads, lots of curves. Very beautiful with the fall colors.

Fall colors before the snow. A view of Spruce Knob the highest peak in West Virginia at 4, 861 feet. 

Yes there are ski areas, these mountains are very steep so I bet they are pretty good. In Elkins are a couple of historic scenic trains. They are not running this late in the year. A statue of Minnehaha the wife of Hiawatha in Longfellow's poem. Don't know where these signs are for but we don't want to go there, too much snow! The fall colors, the bluebird sky and snow were spectacular. 

There was lots of snow. We were glad we did not try to drive over last night or early this morning. The roads were mainly dry, some were wet, probably frozen tonight.

Lots and lots of snow. It is supposed to snow again on Weds night and we still have the Appalachians to go over. 

We drove over the Allegheny and the Shenandoah mountain ranges to day. Basin and range topography which means we drove up and down many, many steep mountains today. the Allegheny's are the eastern continental divide. Water on the west side goes to the Mississippi river and on the east side to the Atlantic ocean. We made it to Virginia, which is for lovers. Although it looks like someone shot up the heart. Seneca rocks are one of the most photographed sights in West Virginia. 

Cool looking clouds overhead in one of the valley's. This is the map of West Virginia. Today we drove over all that green stuff heading east. It is mostly forest and millions of peaks and valleys. 

October 28-29, 2017 Riffle Run, West Virginia

We drove to Burnsville to buy some halloween candy for the festivities at the campground this morning.

We made a wrong turn and ended up in Sutton and found out about the resident alien Braxxie. Apparently in 1952 some people saw a red light flash across the sky and land in nearby Flatwoods. They went up there and saw a tall figure with red eyes, a pointed hood and green draped fabric.  It glided toward them and they ran. He is Braxxie. Welcome to Flatwoods, home of the green monster, a Braxxie billboard, downtown Sutton with brick main street, and the ceramic Braxxie lamps they have been selling as souvenirs since 1963. The visitors center/monster museum is in the old historic drug store. 

Sue with Braxxie at the visitors center, John with one of the 5 Braxxie chairs around the county and me sitting in one. We got candy at the Walmart in the next town and back at camp where they were having a Halloween event trick or treaters came around in the rain.

John handing out candy, wrapped up from the cold and rain. John took this photo of me with my superwoman costume on over the candy bowl.

It is kind of weird to see a RV park all decorated like this. Many of the people come every year for this campout and event. There is a prize for the best decorated campsite and the best costume. The lady across the street, this camo guy looked fake, but when the kids got close he moved and raised his ax, a skeleton dog biting a skeleton in the tree, a puppeteer handing out candy, these two women came from an hour away, they love this event. 

John handing out candy and with Dolly Parton, our neighbor.

The costumes were cute, two adorable dogs in costume, a shark and his kids, these two women were freezing to death, I almost got killed when I called these Union soldiers Confederates, cut kids and a truck with legs hanging out the front and a witch run into the windshield. 

We went to Weston, West Virginia to see the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. It was built in the 1800 as the Weston Hospital. It is supposed to be haunted. They give historic tours but since it is halloween they are doing wacky stuff and it was packed with people so we left. During the civil war both sides military used it, mostly as horse barns, the town was captured by both sides. Then it became a veterans hospital and an insane asylum.  We went to the glass museum instead, which was the real reason we came to Weston. 

The museum was pretty amazing. It had all things glass. All handmade and all the West Virginia companies, but many more too.  West Virginia was at one time the glass capital. It has a good supply of silica sand and natural glass. There were at one time 26 glass companies, but now only a couple. The Blenko man, made from items made at Blenko Glass company. A glass piece from each state, cool glass dishes, Sparkey which was a bunch of glass rondells with wool at the ends, if you turn the crank it creates static electricity. It is attached to a head set and the sign says High Voltage electrostatic generator "prototype rehabilitator, Warning use only on criminally insane". Laboratory glassware.

A manual mold, you put hot glass in the mold, turn the crank and it forms the glass piece. Birds on the courthouse roof- not glass, and how to make glass eyes exhibit. 

Glass research library, glass syringes, a glass house, corning ware and more lab glass, glassware, paper weights, marbles and a companies array of colors. 

Mouth blown light bulbs, TV tubes, cranberry hob nail glassware, an old map of the  West Virginia glass companies, glass fruit and cake knives and a glass space shuttle tile.