For our last adventure of the summer before school starts we decided to head out to the Shenandoah Valley for a canoeing and camping adventure. After arriving and setting up camp we headed to the Luray Caverns. They are quite commercialized compared to caverns we've visited out West but were spectacular none the less. The coolest view was Dream Lake were the stalagtites are perfectly reflected in the water.
A cool feature of this cave is the organ they have inside that the various sounds come from rubber mallets striking different formations. Original "rock" music at it's best! We enjoyed the evening at the city park checking out the playground and disc golf course then headed back for hotdogs and s'mores on the campfire. The next morning we headed up river to put our canoe in the water.
We spent about 4 hours paddling down 8 miles of the south fork of the Shenandoah river. We enjoyed the variety of wildlife we saw including many turtles, heron, fish, cows, and a few deer.
After reaching our campsite, we spent the afternoon relaxing and Jim biked back up the road to retrieve the truck. The next morning we packed up camp. While I dropped the truck off down the river the others headed down to the boat and played in the water waiting for me to bike back. Unfortunately I got a flat tire 2 miles into my 6 mile ride and was not prepared with any flat repair equipment. Fortunately after running another mile with my bike I was able to hitch a ride the rest of the way to camp. We paddled another 10 miles the second day which included a few easy rapids. However it was not the wilderness experience of the previous day as the last few miles of our trip we were joined by hundreds of people riding inner tubes down the river.
In fact the most exciting and difficult rapid involved not only picking the correct line through the rapid but also trying to avoid the inner tubes and the canoe that had just flipped. We enjoyed some time swimming and playing on various rope swings both days even Whitney got in on the rope swing action.
It was an enjoyable trip in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley with the perfect fall camping weather.
