I found a working time machine in the Shenandoah Valley, only a mile off the I-81 exit to Quicksburg, Virginia!
We took the grandchildren to Shenandoah Caverns to get them out of the cabin and out of the heat. As we walked up to the main building, our tour guides were waiting for us – but not the guides we expected. Chatting out front were the manager (Joe Proctor) and the owner (Kathy Kelly) of a shrine to hard work, can-do attitude and natural beauty. We expected a small, short tour through a small town cave system and maybe some “gem sluicing”. We received a history lesson we will never forget.
Kathy Kelly is not always at the caverns her father purchased in 1966 but its clear she feels very close to him when she is there (he passed away in 2015). The American Celebration on Parade (“Parade Float Paradise” in my mind) is not usually open at the time of year that we visited, but she offered to take the four of us down to see it after our cave tour because “the children will never forget it”… and neither will I. As we walked around the room, Kathy shared her stories about the floats and what it meant to her to be involved with so many celebratory events – presidential inaugurations, Mardi Gras, Apple Blossom (and other) Festivals over many decades. She described the painstaking work that went into building the different components, the deadlines, the things that went well, and the things that did not. Stories about celebrities, politicians, the Secret Service, runaway animals – and always about her family: her father, her son who was so much like her father, and the team effort that created family within the group of people who worked on the floats. It felt as if they were all there with us as we walked. Afterwards she and Joe took us down to see the Yellow Barn, so that we could see the O-scale railroad trains running on the beams of the barn and around a tree in the foyer (my husband is a model railroader). It was an incredible day, far more than we expected and never to be forgotten.
At Shenandoah Caverns I saw again what I believe America to be, but have not witnessed in a while. Friendly people, hard working, kind, ingenious, willing to share, to look out for each other and work towards a common goal. Everyone who worked there seemed happy to be there, and genuinely interested and invested in making the experience a good one for the visitor. Highly recommend you put this on your list of places to visit.
The natural beauty of the setting of the storefront, which contains a soda fountain and diner, an excellent gift shop and the “smallest Post Office in America” is relaxing and inviting. The grandkids (ages 5 and 7) were excited to see that they could “mine for gems” at the sluice, and the Main Street exhibit upstairs, with its ginormous bears and the incredible animated storefront window displays of Cinderella, the circus, and Santa Claus kept them entertained while we waited for the cavern tour to start.
The guided cavern tour evokes the excitement of the two young boys who discovered the cave in 1884. The walk is more horizontal than Luray Caverns (which is a more vertical cave), and the formations are lit but the general feel is that you are experiencing the cave pretty much as Mother Nature built it. There is a “wishing pond”, so bring a coin or two if you have something to wish for (the coins are donated to a local charity). At times the tour guide turns off the lights so that you can see just how much the two young boys could see by the light they were able to bring into the cave – the answer is not very much! There is an elevator down (and up!) that is a blessing for those who don’t want to walk the 74 steps into the cave.
The American Celebration on Parade building is full of incredibly large parade floats (I felt like a little mouse creeping around them), beautiful even up close, creatively designed and built by hand with the materials at hand (one includes grass seed!). The display was designed with families in mind, even to the extent of placing actual boulders in a display rather than plaster ones because “kids will want to climb them”. The children could sit in the driver’s seats, look up into the inside of the floats to see how they were made and hunt for items on a scavenger hunt checklist. Each float has its own informational sign, and most have a QR code that brings up a short video (if you have your cellphone with you) with an interesting tidbit about the float. These are all floats made by Earl Hargrove, his company and family over many decades, many used in presidential inaugural parades. The ingenuity involved in creating the floats is amazing, and all to please the crowd and often to surprise the newly elected President! It’s well worth the entrance fee, which is discounted if you also go on the cave tour.
The Yellow Barn building once held gift shops but is now used as an event hall that opens to a beautiful mountain view on one end. There is a gorgeous mirrored wooden bar (brass foot rail and all!) on one end, and the other end has a stage, and of course there is a kitchen. Each year they create a haunted house at the facility, but the rest of the year the hall can be rented for private events.
All in all, an amazing day full of amazing people in an amazing place. Just My Luck!