With negative covid tests in hand and butterflies biting our stomachs, Taylor, my parents, and I boarded a plane whisking us away to Virginia.

Soaring above the tips of the Appalachian mountain range

Since my graduation happened to be at a school clear over on the east coast, we figured we oughtta make a vacation out of it 🙂

But right away we hit a snag: A gnarly storm prevented any planes from landing in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport, so our flight was redirected to South Carolina! I took this shot just to get the awesome billowy clouds, but check out that crazy bad weather just underneath.

Man, there is another world up there above us in the clouds.

Our only views of South Carolina were from the airport windows over dinner. The humidity was already thick in the tarmac, just like a really warm sticky hug. The BBQ was great, even in an airport 🙂 Soon enough, we got on another flight to North Carolina… just to embark on a 3 hour drive up to Roanoke.

Yeah, Wednesday was a pretty heavy travel day lol.

Roanoke

The next morning we woke up to Taylor’s favorite part of vacation: hotel breakfast!

I love those crinkly eyes.

My parents were still resting from last night’s travels, so Taylor and I snuck off for a little walk. We came across this gorgeous cathedral.

I’m drooling over these rose arches.

A little history on the missionary work of Reverend John W Lynch and the depictions of the stained glass windows here 🙂 Isn’t description on the epitaph plaque? “teacher, preacher, builder, citizen”.

We met up with my parents and made the drive up to our old hometown: BV 🙂

Buena Vista

We ran the quick errand of picking up my robes, cap, and honors cords from the SVU campus. (Honors cords! I’ve never had those before!) Once those were stashed safely under someone’s seat, we traveled down Main Street for lunch. We settled on a place Taylor and I used to really like:

I forgot how delicious (and huge!) the calzones are. Note for any future travelers: the “large” is like family style. Go small for single 🙂

My family made fun of me for taking this blah shot of BV Main but I don’t regret it 😉 Back in the day, our home was at the end of this road and around a corner. Taylor and I kept our little family busy by spending a lot of a time on this street, visiting the library, post office, park, and the Amish Cupboard in a single day. On holidays, we’d line up with the rest of the town with our camping chairs to watch an unapologetic Republican party themed parade. (As well as the random fake killer clowns that came blitzing down the road. Never figured out who was in the costumes, but they pissed us off for scaring the kids.) My sister actually bought her wedding dress from a shop on this road.

Lots of really great memories of this small town country street. ❤

The building with the tower below is the library. LOVED that place.

Once I was finished with the literal stroll down literal memory lane, we settled in for a hour’s drive up to tour the grand exhibit of the Luray Caverns.

Luray Caverns

As the story goes, a few guys were exploring the woods one day when they noticed a quarter sized hole in the ground. Cold air was bursting from it, like a miniature geyser. Knowing that there were caves in the area, and having noticed some depressions in the surrounding land, they suspected that they were above a cave. The men widened that tiny opening and discovered what would later be known as the largest cave system in the eastern United States.

My biggest question, honestly, was who tf just drops into the gnome-forsaken earth looking for a cave?

Here is a little model of the “discovery”.

Look at these ancient rock formations just a mile beneath our feet.

The ghost column:

The mirror pool. It’s incredible.

Amazing how the rock can look like fabric.

This cavern is known for having an organ pipe installed within… the peddles tapping certain stalactites to play music. They used to hold balls deep down here. Today, you can reserve it for a wedding!

Outside the cave, marmots ran up and down the hills freely. This chunky guys always make me laugh.

We visited a toy and car museum to round out our day in Luray 🙂

We had dinner at our favorite BV restaurant JJ’s Meat Shack (just gonna throw in their dining menu here… the “hogpen” is pretty similar to Canadian poutine and is SO GOOD.) While we waited for dinner, boar bees were doing their best to find wood on the tin roof to make their nests. I’d almost forgotten about these large bumbling bees that bonked their way around the siding of our duplex. Carpenter bees are quite large and gentle and adorable.

We ate as much as we good before retiring to our airbnb, which is actually operated by some old friends of ours! This was such a delight to find and meet up with the Shiraki family again!

The home was originally built as a boarding house, so there are quite a few rooms to rent when coming through the area. Their Airbnb rental listing is here. I would 110% recommend staying with this family. I hope we cross paths again with our kids next time 🙂

Part 2 of our trip is here: “graduation day“