From the Mountains to the Sea: Skyline Drive to Skyland Lodge

Part One: THE MOUNTAINS

FRIDAY, MAY 17

WE begin our travels in Winchester, Virginia, at the Shoney's Inn. After having driven through rain that fell so hard we had to pull over to the side of the road and wait it out, the indoor Jacuzzi/pool sure is tempting, but we decide instead to head straight for the bar. There are several groups of women in the bar who appear to belong to tournament bowling teams, and they all become quite agitated when a man wearing a large boa constrictor around his neck enters. It's funny to watch how different people react to the presence of a snake. The Snake Man seems to enjoy the commotion, and so do most of the bowling women. The snake himself appears content and happy in the safety of his human companion's presence, kind of like a young child peeking out at strangers from around Mom's skirt.

SATURDAY, MAY 18

THE SKY is cloudy as we start down the Skyline Drive this morning, and the spectacular view is obscured somewhat, but what scenery there is looks beautiful. We pull over at nearly every turnout (and there are a lot of them). The Shenandoah portion of the Appalachian Trail runs more or less parallel to Skyline Drive, crossing it several times, and at one of the trailheads we get out and hike a small portion of it... a very small portion (like, maybe ten feet, although we must hike another trail to get there).

Also, at one stop, where there is a souvenir store/gas station/picnic area, we see deer grazing near the parking lot. They are not frightened and one doe walks right around us, nearly poking her head in the window. We watch as they wander over toward another group of people, then turn and walk away through the woods.

The speed limit is only 35 miles per hour for the entire length of Skyline Drive, which is fine because you don't really want to go any faster than that, anyway.

By early afternoon, we leave Skyline Drive for a side-trip to Luray Caverns. The caverns are much larger and more impressive than Lost River Caverns in Hellertown, which we visited two years ago. There are several family groups on the tour, which takes over an hour, and once again we are reminded of just how difficult it can be to travel with young children.

One of Luray's best-known features is a truly unique musical instrument, billed as the world's only Stalacpipe Organ. Combining the naturally echoing acoustics of the cave with fact that each stalactite column resonates at a specific frequency, the instrument is made up of small electronic plungers mounted near various rock formations and controlled by an organ keyboard. It works the same way a door chime works, only with a full range of tones. The organist plays music from a central console, but the actual music comes from locations spread out over several acres of caves. The echos and delays give a very cathedral-like quality to the sound.

It begins to rain and grow foggy as we are leaving the caverns, a situation which we will come to think of as permanent after awhile...It is not far to the Skyland Lodge from where we return to the Drive, but as the afternoon passes, the clouds settle on the mountain, making driving slow and scenic views non-existent. By the time we arrive at the Lodge, the thick fog makes even reading the direction signs difficult.

Skyland is a lovely lodge, originally built in 1894 by George Freeman Pollock, one of the people instrumental in establishing Shenandoah as a national park. Pollock chose a perfect spot for his retreat: 52 acres at 3,680 feet, the highest point on Skyline Drive, affording breathtaking views of the Shenandoah Valley. The lodge has been renovated several times and now consists of rustic log cabins in scenic settings and more modernized (well, circa 1970 anyway) buildings at the very edge of the mountainside. Of course, the view is somewhat less breathtaking when you can hardly see the lodge, let alone the valley.

Our room is in one of these buildings. It is probably the best room in the lodge, certainly the best location, but disappointingly, our big picture window looks out into about ten feet of visibility.

Sitting out on our balcony, with our eyes straining, Linda and I exclaim breathlessly to one another,

"Oh Darling! I do think I can see the tree line!"

"Where, Dearest? I don't see anything. But wait! Look over there... Could that be a ridge? No, silly, over THERE. Oh, never mind; now you can't see it anymore".

We walk over to the lodge for dinner, a formidable task since all the buildings appear only as vague thickenings in the mist until we arrive within a few feet. The dining room is quite picturesque, and would probably be even more so if we could see out of the windows, which we can't. The meal itself is not so impressive. Linda has one of the lodge's specialties, Country Fried Chicken. We speculate on just which country it might have been from, apparantly one currently suffering from famine. I order catfish and it really isn't bad, which is about all you can hope for with catfish. The desserts are good, though. Looking aroung the lodge after dinner to see what might be going on, we learn that we can attend an exciting park ranger's lecture on butterflies or listen to singer Debbie Zerr perform family-style folksongs in the lodge's tavern room ("This Land Is Your Land", "Puff, the Magic Dragon, etc.)

We choose to feel our way back to our room...

Just before we left home, Linda borrowed a book from the library. Recommended by her friend Becky, it's a Sydney Sheldon novel, "The Other Side of Midnight", and she's been reading it along the way.

The novel concerns the murder of a young woman by her husband. The reader is aware that the murder will take place, but is not certain of when or where. Linda is amused to notice that the characters in the book had recently been in the mountains, where the husband intended to push her off a cliff, but when that gambit failed, he took her on a cave tour where he currently intends to lure her away from the group and murder her in a dark cave. Linda has been watching me very closely throughout the Luray Caverns tour, and never seems to stray far from the tour guide's line of vision...