Salem, Virginia

One of the great things about vacations, is that sometimes you happen upon great surprises. Yesterday, we happened upon a great surprise.

We left Nashville very early once again and it was a struggle to get everyone up and on the road. Our camping is a modified version. When Kim and I dreamed up this vacation over a year ago, we were going to take our trailer with us. We have a hard sided trailer about 21 feet called a Towlite. It actually lowers for easy towing and we can store it in the garage. Covering the same distance while pulling the trailer, this same vacation would have taken 7 weeks and Kim and I were not willing to spend that much time on the road. We decided that our camping would be done using KOA’s camping cabins. The cabins are hard-sided, come with a double bed, bunk beds, lights and electrical outlets. We pack food, our camping stove and essentials and just cook on the porch. The nice thing about the electrical outlets is that we can plug in our thermoelectric cooler. Its basically a cooler that you don’t need to add ice and has worked beautifully. It also has a car adapter which allows it to be plugged into a car adapter. (We have a car plug in near the back of the Suburban.) The KOA’s have bathrooms and showers and swimming pools so if you want get out but don’t want to sleep on the ground in a tent, the cabins might work for you.

We finally said goodbye to I-40 as it has been a good friend to us for almost a week. We are now on I-81 as we head east to Pennsylvania. We planned to stay in a hotel in Salem, Virginia and the kids and I needed the break from camping. Kim had been researching things in and around Salem and found something called Dixie Caverns. This was our great surprise. Basically, it is a cavern that covers 276 stairs both going up and down and has all kinds of stalagmites and stalactites in a very small area. In the hour we were in the cave (it is a guided tour and they have lights throughout the cavern) we covered about a mile of cave and saw all kinds of shapes, characters and wonderful cave designs. It was one of the coolest things I have ever done. The pictures Kim took looked outstanding and I can’t wait see what they look like on the computer. This is something I would highly recommend you see if you are ever on I-81. Something I noticed about Virginia. They are extremely proud of their southern roots and they play up their confederate roots. They still refer to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression.

I don’t know if you are like me, but one of the things I always do on vacation is make a list of things I didn’t take advantage of. Meaning, we drive by historical places or fun places and I wish we had time to see. We drove by Dollywood and can’t believe we didn’t have time to visit. We drove by the home of Andrew Jackson in Tennessee and the Civil War battlefield in Shiloh. The battle of Shiloh has particular interest to Kimberly because her great grandfather on her dad side of the family served as a corporal in the union army and took a bullet in one of his hips. He survived his wound and lived to see the end of the war. I think it would have been a special moment to experience the battlefield.

As you can tell, on vacation, we either eat at the campground or eat at local places. We finally did eat at a chain restaurant, Cracker Barrel. I wish they had one in California. The food is really good and their hash brown casserole is the best side dish on the planet. I have tried in vain to reproduce the casserole and I have failed repeatedly. If you have a Cracker Barrel crush like I do then you know what I am talking about.

Tomorrow we head to Pennsylvania to stay with family. We will finally reach our destination; the half way point of our family vacation.

MZ