Luray

We decided to be "spontaneous" a few weekends ago and go on a little trip.  By spontaneous, I mean we decided a few days ahead of time, booked a hotel, did research on the area, and were packed and prepared to go before the day of.  For Roy and I, that's more spontaneous that we've been for a long time! :)  We went out to Luray, VA (by the way, it's more fun if you say Luray V-A) on the 4th of July after our ward patriotic breakfast.

After the breakfast, we switched out scooters and the wagon for luggage and jumped in the van to Luray.  The kids were so excited and the drive was beautiful!  We drove through these tiny towns tucked around the mountains of Virginia and enjoyed the perfect weather and gorgeous green scenery.  Our first stop was the Luray Zoo.  Honestly, we're sort of zoo snobs since we have the National Zoo close by.  While we enjoyed the Luray Zoo, especially the alligator feeding, we were a little disappointed that there were no giraffes, especially since I called ahead and they told me they had giraffes and could even feed them.  But we swallowed our disappointment and enjoyed the up-close encounters we had with the animals there.

After we were done at the zoo, we headed out for the hotel.  We had to go around windy mountain roads and a few small towns before we got there and it was another beautiful drive.  The kids were excited to find out the hotel had a swimming pool and they were excited to practice some of their swimming lesson skills.  Both Abby and Sam were brave enough to try out the pool with only one floaty each, which is a big improvement from 2 floatation devices and holding desperately to whichever adult is nearby. :)  We also had a great night out for dinner at Denny's, ice cream cones and cookies at the Burger King play place for dessert, and running around playing with the cannons on the lawn of the hotel.

But my favorite part of our day was when everyone was clean and in pajamas, we got tucked into our beds and turned on the Capital Fourth on PBS.  The girls stayed awake for the whole show and loved the fireworks.  Sam fell asleep curled next to Roy when the fireworks countdown clock said 1:22 minutes left.  But if you asked him the next morning, the fireworks were awesome!

The real reason for our trip was to see the Luray Caverns.  They were impressive!  We were so lucky that Catherine brought her kids out to enjoy them with us.  It made the caverns so much cooler for our kids!  The pictures don't even do the cavern justice--it was amazingly big!

After lunch, we all went to the Garden Maze and the Antique Car Museum.  We had a great time together and really enjoyed the fun and the relaxing time spent on our quick couple days of a stay-vacation (because, really, can you call it a vacation if it's not even 2 hours away?)

It was nice to have a quick getaway before Roy leaves (tomorrow) for Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia for a week.  He gets to go to the coolest places!  Luckily, I get to stay here with these cool people! :)