Road Trip: Luray Caverns & Staunton

Life happens and I have had this post half finished and saved in Blogger for over a month now. Finally had a chance to finish it up. See how we ended our summer....

Camille, Clyde and I squeezed in one last trip before school started. Michael was headed to Blacksburg, so I organized an overnight with my mom and sisters to Luray Caverns and Staunton. We piled into the family truckster with four kids and four adults and headed to Wally World Luray Caverns. When we got there it was quite the opposite of closed, we were definitely not the only ones who decided to visit Lurary on the Sunday before Labor Day.

We quickly ate our picnic lunch and realized there was one line with a 45 minute wait to buy tickets and another with an 1.5 hour wait to get into the caverns. We started waiting in both lines and quickly decided that we couldn't do it. Thankfully they have a ropes course, a garden maze and mining!

 Clyde had no fear and was the only one to go up to the top level on the ropes course! 

After mining, we did the garden maze which had just the right amount of challenge to it.

And the big hit of the day was mining. We may have spent close to $100 on these "gems". But we figured why not since we couldn't do the caverns.

That afternoon we headed to Staunton, VA.  It is a little under an hour away from Luray. They have the cutest downtown with lots of shopping and restaurants within walking distance to our hotel, The Stonewall Jackson Hotel and Conference Center.

We had dinner that night at the Byers Street Bistro and it was tasty and very kid-friendly.

So lesson learned....if you are going to Luray Caverns....don't go on a holiday and perhaps buy your tickets in advance. I hope we will be able to go back and actually see the main attraction!