Luray Caverns

It was too cold and rainy to hike on our recent trip down to Roanoke and so we decided for a different kind of adventure—underground! Luray Caverns is the biggest underground cave system on the East Coast and it's absolutely stunning. We walked for a mile and a half through an unworldly landscape of stalactites and stalagmites. It was surprisingly warm in the caves and nothing can live that far down, so it's all just amazing rock formations and a pool of water so absolutely still that it looks like a mirror. The kids particularly enjoyed tossing coins into the 'wishing well' and the formation nicknamed 'Snoopy'. The guide  even turned off the lights for a few moments and we got to experience the total darkness of a cave.