Skyline caverns

My labmate D came to visit this weekend, and we explored the Front Royal area a bit. We made it to the Skyline Caverns, which were really neat to see... it's like another world, underground.

Here are some stalactites and some flowstone...


Here's a shallow pool where the surface of the water reflects the stone ceiling above it. So cool.



Skyline Caverns is most famous for the development of calcium carbonate anthodites, which look like crystal flowers. They are absolutely amazing. They formed in a vacuum chamber that was disturbed when the caverns were being explored.




So cool!

Our house, finally unpacked.

We're finally mostly unpacked! Yay!

The kitchen (behind you is the sliding door to the porch which is taped up to keep the bugs out, and the front door).



The kitchen from the living room...



The living room #1
The living room #2
It's nice! And it's SO nice to not be moving right now.

A few gratuitous gross bug pictures

This is why I'm not a fan of stinkbugs. Fortunately, although we still find pockets of them (I pulled 44 out of the backpack I haven't used since I left State College this afternoon), they've almost all disappeared, and Shasta makes short work of any that she finds.


The trashcan in our house...

Our windows...

And just so you don't think Virginia is just totally disgusting, we do have some really cool bugs.
This one hangs out by our front door.

Cape Charles II

This is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. It's an unbelievable feat of civil engineering - it's 17 miles of bridges punctuated by two 1 mile long tunnels over the Chesapeake Bay. We came over to Cape Charles at night, in windy conditions, and the wind was buffeting the car. We could see the spray and the waves over the side of the bridge, and it was quite an experience. Going back towards Norfolk, the sea was much calmer, but it's amazing to drive on the bridge - you can only see ocean all around you, and it feels like it never ends.


By the tunnel closest to Norfolk, there's a little rest stop where you can pull off and they sell food and souvenirs, and there's a fishing pier for fishermen. We stopped so we could see the container ship going over the tunnel we had just passed through.
Me with my eyes closed on the beach of Cape Charles....
The sunset from the bed and breakfast we stayed at. It was amazing, and considering we got in on a cancellation, a fantastic deal!
These are sunken ships that act as breakers for the waves at the Kiptopeke State Park. From the Virginia State Parks website, "These ships were an emergency response to a critical shortage of maritime cargo ships in World War II. Operated by merchant seamen and a naval armed guard, they carried all types of war supplies throughout the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The nine McCloskey ships off the park’s shoreline were sunk to provide a breakwater for the Virginia Ferry Corporation’s ferry service linking the Eastern Shore to Norfolk. Today, they provide visitors a glimpse into the past and fishermen with fishing opportunities." Very cool!

In addition to all this, we walked through a field of goldenrod in the State Park that was full of hundreds of monarch butterflies! I've never seen anything like it. Perhaps they were migrating south? It was amazing!

Cape Charles

We went to the shore two weekends ago for our very first weekend off since July 4th (without working or moving). It was absolutely wonderful. Cape Charles is on the southern tip of Virginia's eastern shore, about 4 hours away, and it actually faces the Chesapeake Bay, although you can't see the continent from the Cape, and it has an island feel- you have to take the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel to get there. I really wish we lived closer to the ocean so we could see it more often. Some pics...
Goldenrod by the sea...

There was a ton of driftwood!
Shasta found a dead pufferfish!

The infamous blue crab.
Shasta before heading down to the beach - she loved it.

A series of posts!

...are coming up.

Firstly, the cat and the dog have graduated to best friends. This is how they spend their days.

Goodbye Felix

Sadly, Felix passed away this morning, after 19 years of cricket-hunting and digging holes and generally being an awesome, gentle, and beautiful leopard gecko. He died with his head resting on a nice fat cricket, a scourge of crickets to the end. We'll miss him!

(Despite his sometimes poor aim hunting crickets, I'd like to point out that 12 crickets a week for 52 weeks a year for 19 years = 11,856 crickets).