On July 24, Bob Solomon, Katie Rohner, and their
three children — Sammy (age 13), Phoebe (age 10), and Max (age 8) — started a three-week cross-country trip from their New Haven home to Berkeley, California, where they will spend the fall semester. This is an installment from their occasional journal:
Driving past the green rolling hills of Virginia, dotted with picturesque wooden barns and lots of grazing cows, we continued to discover the joy of finding the ideal music to enhance the scene. We had been treated to a wonderfully eclectic mix of rock music prepared for us before we left by our neighbors and budding music aficionados, Zev and Malachai York. Once we hit Virginia, Susan Tedeschi, The Allman Bros., Alison Krauss, J.J. Cale and the “Trio” CD, with Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt, began the transition from the northeastern urban scenery to the cusp of country and blues country. Sammy observed that music is one of two unifying ways people from all backgrounds can connect to each other (the other being sports – in large part a tribute to the camaraderie of her wonderful teammates of the New England Comets U14 soccer club) and we all had to agree.
Weather was still an issue. At breakfast, we sat next to a multi-generational (lots of gray hair) Harley Davidson tour. “It can’t rain EVERY day,” one of them proclaimed. That said, it continued to rain throughout our search for Harpers Ferry, in West Virginia, at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. The rain stopped in time for a walk through the beautiful park, to the town. Location is everything, and Harpers Ferry’s location made it a critical site in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, not to mention John Brown’s raid in support of the abolitionist movement. We also made our first foray into southern barbeque there, which became an obsession throughout the trip.
We arrived at our next sightseeing attraction, Luray Caverns, around 3 p.m. Our first tour of a registered natural landmark would actually begin below ground in this visually spectacular home to stalactites and stalagmites begun four million centuries ago beneath the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Minerals flowing through the seeping ground water form the staggering array of white, caramel, and chocolate-colored formations at a rate of one cubic inch every 120 years. In addition to a surreal reflecting pool of water that perfectly mimics the stalactites above it to display what appears to be an otherworldly city of stalagmites below, there is also the ingeniously engineered Great Stalactite Organ, which connects wires to stalactites all around the caverns and transmits their subterranean groans to a full-sized organ located in the “ballroom” for the most earthly and haunting serenade one could ever hope to hear. Music, it seems, is going to play a big part in our trip no matter where we find it.
The temperature in the caverns never varies from a cool 54 degrees year-round, no matter the weather outside. Normally, at this time of year in Virginia, that would be a refreshing reprieve from the blistering heat. However, Virginia, like much of the terrain we are covering, is experiencing cooler-than-usual weather. Truth is, everything within the cavern seems to remain the same no matter the “weather” outside. It’s remarkable that centuries of war, political turbulence, poverty, struggles for human rights, natural disasters, life and death have played out just a few hundred feet above and yet nothing stops the steady drip of mineral-soaked water and the stillness and tranquility of this phenomenal underworld.
Within the same complex is a huge and beautifully rendered garden maze, which the kids loved and the adults were ready to hack to pieces by the end. All in all, definitely a great stop for anyone within driving distance.