Deep inside the bowels of Luray Caverns, a tourist mecca that we almost didn’t visit, except for a prodigious summer thunderstorm that waylaid our plans to sightsee along Skyline Drive at the crest of the Shenandoah Mountains, I took the above photo. The underground tour is well worth the $30 dollar ticket price, and we had the entire place almost to ourselves. If you ever visit this part of the country, I highly recommend stopping here. It gives you pause and makes you appreciate the still unseen wonders of the natural world.
This was also our last day in this area. As of this writing, I’m ensconced in a rented house in Washington DC, about two hours east. While we were in Luray, we also rented a house there. Generally we’ve had good experiences with these AirBnB-style accommodations, but have recently had a spell of bad luck. Our last one in Florida had roaches. The one in Luray was clean and well maintained, but when we arrived, to our dismay we found out the Internet was out. Normally not a big deal as our phone service was still working, but I had planned to work on my laptop while there. This is also an important detail, as soon after we moved in, we heard what sounded like an intruder trying to break into the house via the backdoor. New house, small town (like the kind described in a Stephen King novel). This is rural Virginia after all. I have not partaken in the various novels and shows depicting the effects of the opioid crisis on rural America, but us big-city types moving into a semi-luxurious house with an absentee landlord, and the internet was down, and it being pitch dark outside. Did I mention the back porch light wasn’t working either? Oh, and all the security devices in the house weren’t working because of that pesky Internet outage.
Anyway, the sound of an unseen intruder at your back door jiggling the door was quite unsettling to say the least. We tried shouting at the phantom menace to identify themselves to no avail. My wife dialed 911 and asked for the police, who promptly arrived and checked around the house. No sign of anything, except the yet-to-be-installed hot tub laying on its side in the backyard. The owner had failed to let us know he had contractors working on the property beforehand. We ended up moving the kitchen knife collection to the upstairs area for the rest of our stay. My daughter also informed us this was the actual plot of some streaming horror film about a haunted rental house. Did I mention there was a mysterious locked door which led to an unseen basement area? Needless to say, we didn’t sleep well for most of the week.
Now we are in the nation’s capital, and ironically, tonight we were visited by some sort of young door-to-door salesperson. Our houseguests did not react well to this unforeseen visit, given what transpired earlier this week. I guess our Outside Problems aren’t over yet.