Made it through Chicago before Rush Hour got bad. First stop, for quick breakfast snack, at the Tippecanoe Battlefield near Lafayette, Indiana.

Lots of interstate highway miles, but I found a short cut on country roads through the mountains of West Virginia.

After 13-hours on the road I finally arrived in Stephens City. The next day Sara, Lana, Audrey & I decided to visit Skyline Drive, even though it was a cloudy, rainy day.

We were hoping to see a bear, like I did on my last Skyline Drive visit. But all we saw was Mr. Marshmallow in the visitors center. But we learned a lot about bears from the Ranger Talk.

We were up above the clouds, or so it appeared at first.

Then we were in the clouds, for most of the rest of Skyline Drive, and we couldn’t see very much at all.

Then we visited Luray Caverns, but fourth largest cave complex in the U.S., where the climate is exactly the same all year long.

We were amazed by a serene underground lake, where the stalactites were reflected in the perfect mirror of the water’s surface.

We were deep under the surface of the earth…

…where we were serenaded by a pipe organ. The pipes were the stalagtites, which were tuned to different notes. “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”

Luray Caverns also has a museum and an antique car collection. This Model T Ford is similar to the Model T owned by my grandfather.

On the way home we drove through Weems Bottom Bridge, a covered bridge from another era which still carries traffic.

The bridge looks pretty sturdy, as it crosses the north fork of the Shenandoah River.