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.