Yesterday we decided to keep the day trip adventures of spring break going, and took a car ride out to Quicksburg, VA (about 1 1/2 hours from Loudoun Co) to the lovely and incredible
Shenandoah Caverns. I haven't been there in many years, but I remembered it as being even better than the well-known Luray Caverns which is nearby.
It was a gorgeous day, and we really had a fabulous time. The caverns currently have a
coupon on their website that is good until August 1, 2011. Children ages 6 - 14 get free admission with a paying adult (one free child per paying adult). Children 5 and under are always free. Adult admission is $23 per person, and you won't have to pay for your kids (usually $10 per child). So for a family of four, $46 isn't bad at all for an entire day of full on incredible sights and interactive educational fun.
Admission to the caverns also gets you admission to three other attractions on their property, so we made an entire day of it. The owner of the caverns,
Earl Hargrove, apparently owns, among other things, a parade float building company. His company designs massive parade floats that have been used in the Rose Bowl Parade, Inaugural Parades, the Miss America Pageant and many others. There is an entire exhibit hall of these floats, some of them you can climb onto/into. Great photo taking! Also, upstairs from the cavern gift shop is an entire display of automated store front windows (Mr. Hargrove's first business endeavor). Lastly, there is a "Big Yellow Barn" on the property at the bottom of the hill. They handed our boys a scavenger hunt sheet with items to find within the barn, and gave the boys prizes once they found everything on the list. The barn is really not a barn at all... its a combination gift shop and display area for old stagecoaches, beekeeping paraphanilia, wine (they do tastings!), and many other items. They have a barrel train ride outside for kids ($1 per child), and they also have some fenced animals the kids can feed and pet. We spent at least an hour making friends with the goats and bunnies.
Now you see why this turned into an all day excursion, there was a lot to do! There is also a big dinosaur outside of the caverns kids can climb onto. I saw it when we pulled up but we forgot about it later.
Beware, there isn't a restaurant on the property. There are picnic tables if you come prepared or you can drive one exit down like we did and pop into Denny's (hadn't been to one since college!). I do believe there is a snack bar that opens at the caverns more towards summer but I don't know what they sell there. The gift shop has lots of cool crystals, jewelry, rocks, and novelty items kids love. It seemed very reasonably priced. The staff, from our cavern tour guide, to the cashier, to the guy mowing the lawn, were all very nice and extremely kid-friendly.
I've been bringing the boys' wallets everytime we're going to a destination. If they see something they want to buy, there are no arguements. They're allowed to use their own money on whatever they want (unless its something ridiculous and outrageously expensive, then I try to steer them to a better choice). We still use the
bear jar reward system, so they are always trying to earn their $5 rewards by filling up their bears. They also get money for birthdays and some holidays from relatives. So what did they each buy yesterday? Dylan spent $2 on a giant lollipop, which he lost interest in after 20 minutes of licking. Logan bought a $3 potato gun.
Speaking of potatoes, the staff told us about another destination not two minutes from them. The
Route 11 Potato Chip factory is just down the street, so we hurried before their closing time to check it out. Unfortunately they weren't cooking any chips yesterday, but we saw the factory and sampled some tasty chips. We'll have to go back sometime when they're cranking out chips, just to see how its done.
As if all of this wasn't enough, the caverns staff also gave us directions to one of the last of eight covered bridges left in Virginia. It was neat to see in person, and drive thru. Very picturesque. We stopped in
Strasburg on the way home to grab an ice cream cone, wanting a sweet end to a superb day together.
The boys are at such great ages to take places. They really were in awe of and interested in the caverns and the parade floats. But, they aren't too old yet to still take pleasure in feeding some bunnies, and licking a soft serve cone. They have the patience to listen to a tour, but they still loved running around outside and taking it all in. They didn't complain about the car ride, and they loved the spirit of adventure of our day.
We're a family that loves to be on the go, and we go on a lot of outings. It was more difficult when Logan was younger, but we're finally able to do just about anything we can dream up, and I'm loving it.
