Friday, September 9, 2022
We took our time packing and leaving this morning, savoring the last moments at our woodsy private river site. Finding our way to the main highway was confusing as the 11-foot tunnel was a GPS black hole that we fought not to get sucked through. Once we reached the main road, the 1.5-hour trip was uneventful. After we took the exit off of trucky I-81, we filled the RV with diesel, parked in a huge lot, and ate a fast-food lunch before continuing along the rural road to our campground. We have stayed at this KOA (Harrisonburg/Shenandoah Valley Holiday) once before and enjoyed it. After set-up and lounging about for awhile, we departed for the 4 pm Endless Caverns tour.
Endless Caverns is a privately owned cave system about three miles from New Market, VA. There is also a nice looking RV park near the cavern entrance. After paying for our tickets in the park’s lodge/store, we had a brief wait to look around. Soon our guide, Jake, met and led us through a locked door a few hundred yards outside the lodge. We donned the jackets we had carried along, readying ourselves for the 55 degree cavern temperatures.
Jake lead us on our private 75-minute mile-long tour of the caverns taking great care to point out the slippery and tricky sections of the journey, The caverns were discovered in 1879 by a couple of farm boys who are believed to have been the first humans to enter the cave. The longest cavern passage explored is 6.5 miles long but those belly-crawling spelunkers had to turnaround after a few days due to lack of enough food to continue. According to Jake, to this day no one has found the end of that passage, hence the caverns’ moniker.
Most of the cavern formations had a reddish color to them due to iron impurities but some were pure white. These caverns were still very active and, encouragingly, I saw many instances where previously broken stalactites had continued their elongation, some with 2-3 inches of new growth. We emerged from our cavern tour in the basement of the lodge/store. We drove back to our campground and had snacks and beer while watching more television coverage for the changing British monarchy before heading to bed.
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