Natural Bridge

We spent our first day at Natural Bridge. Besides the bridge, they have an Indian village, a butterfly garden, a wax museum, and caverns. We saw everything with time to spare. It’s actually quite a pretty area. I didn’t realize it, but Route 11 runs on top of Natural Bridge. Drivers can’t tell when they’re driving over the bridge. In fact, I rode my bike over Natural Bridge on my recent bike hike and never realized it. This is quite intentional, because there is no safe place to pull over and gawk.

Lace Falls

On the other side of the bridge and at the end of the trail, there’s a small waterfall. It’s 113 steps back up to the top of the hill. The Indian village is between the bridge and the waterfall. I was impressed by how much the actors knew about life in an Indian village in the early 1700s.

Butterfly

I was even able to get a few decent pics of some butterflies. I was amazed I did as well as I did, considering I was using a phone camera.

Foam Henge

Danita went to the caverns by herself. They say it’s the deepest cavern in the eastern US. After all that we took some quiet time in our room. Then we went out to the Pink Cadillac Diner for dinner. On the way over, we stopped at … Foam Henge! If you visit at sunrise on the summer solstice, you will be able to see that foam henge is a little mis-aligned. They say the error will automatically correct itself in about 4,000 years.

Merlin Making Stone Henge

How was the original Stone Henge constructed? One alternative theory is that Merlin did it using magic, kind of like Mickey Mouse mopping the room with all those brooms hauling water. This statue of Merlin was modeled after a friend of the artist, with the help of a death mask. How wonderfully macabre. While this theory of the construction of stone henge is controversial, there’s no doubt about how foam henge was constructed — one strange artist and 4 or 5 Mexicans.

We came back at 9:00 to watch the light show at Natural Bridge. Unfortunately, the rain we had successfully dodged all day finally caught up with us. The show is a half hour long. We watched the first 20 minutes from good seats. When the rain got heavier, we moved to watch the rest of the show from directly under the bridge, where it was dry. It was a very nice light show, but I couldn’t help but reflect on the second day of my bike hike, riding up that mountain in heavy rain, thinking “This is a good challenge. I can do this. But maybe in the future I can arrange my life to spend less time in the rain.” It seems to be a goal I haven’t yet met.

Tomorrow we’ll enjoy a leisurely breakfast and head down to Reed Manor.