Stalactites and Stalagmites

Sixth Anniversary Breakfast No. 1: Bacon Cinnamon Rolls and Potato Basil Frittata

This weekend was our sixth anniversary, which we celebrated in two parts. The first part was at home. This is the part where "Tim and Roxie lovingly watched the Dallas Cowboys" as Tim put it. Tim and Roxie also lovingly made breakfast together like we do every morning on the weekends, so we had lots of bacon cinnamon rolls to numb ourselves while Dallas demonstrated their inferiority.

After the game, phase two began and we drove two hours to Luray, VA, singing out loud to my schizophrenic iPod for most of the foggy, misty, terrifying drive, to keep that "hurtling to your death" feeling from sinking in.

Sixth Anniversary Dinner: The Artisans Grill, Fresh Mozzarella Bruscetta, Creole Flounder stuffed with crab, salad, snow peas, rice pilaf, Barbecue Cheese Burger, Carmel Pecan Cheese Cake, chocolate ice cream, thoughts of the forgotten bottle of champagne back home in the mini fridge...

Tim is excellent at planning secret vacations. Or maybe not secret vacations, or surprise vacations, because I know we're going. I just never know where we're staying or what we're doing until we get there, which I like.

We stayed at the Mayneview B&B, which was a beautiful old Victorian house with five bedrooms on the upper floor. Our bedroom, the "Gwenevere" had a private bath in the hallway, and essentially, our own private cat, Molly, who slept with us and followed us all over the house.

For some reason after we got home from dinner, the gods conspired to make it a horrid sleepless night. Our room was wickedly hot and we were too timid to turn the heater down because we didn't want to freeze like we do in our own apartment. Then at about three in the morning, it sounded like a cat got in a deathmatch with a badger and one of them lost, right below our window, which agitated the cat in our room and my instincts to go gather up all outdoor cats and bring them inside. At about 5, Molly wanted to be let out of the room. Then at about six a.m. some sort of town warning siren went off and continued blaring for at least fifteen minutes. At 8:30, it was time to get up and get ready for breakfast.

But the room was very lovely. Really. And the bed was super comfortable. And all of the creaking in the house added "ambiance." I would stay there again, believe it or not. :)

Sixth Anniversary Breakfast No. 2: Swedish Blueberry Soup, Lemon Scone, Pecan Praline French Toast, bacon, orange juice.

At the B&B breakfast, there was one other couple our age, who had stayed in the owner's other house, and who, apparently, had been forwarned about the town's gratuitous sirens and hadn't had to make the bleary-eyed decision whether to get up and head for safety, or sleep and take our chances with whatever natural disaster might be coming.

They were a nice couple. The man had gone to Georgetown and the woman also thought DC was a stupid place to live, after living there for 9 months. I liked them.

After our delicious breakfast, and "Unpleasant Incident No. 2," finding out that a five bedroom Victorian house somehow had a water heater built for a FEMA trailer, because the hot water in my shower ran out completely just as I got the conditioner in my hair (either that or Tim used it all up), Tim and I checked out and headed to the Luray Caverns.

The tour of the caverns follows a mile-long underground trail through a giant calcite cavern system, with the most insane stalactite and stalagmites that I have ever seen (I think, if you look very carefully, the formation in the middle of the lake above looks like people in a boat). The caves were discovered in 1878, when people were much more creative and exciting, so one of the larger caverns is a "Ballroom" which used to have a parquet floor, and still has the "stalacpipe" organ. The organ keys are connected to various stalactites throughout that cavern and when pressed, they "ping" them, creating music. I had no idea that stalactites had different tonal values, or that they resonated, but this definitely classifies as the most incredible musical instrument I've ever seen or heard.

About the caverns, I should just say that beyond their obvious beauty, it was bizarre and amazing how clean the air was. The air was 97% free of bacteria because virtually nothing lives in the caverns except the occasional algae, it was 57 degrees and slightly humid, and it smelled... good. It smelled like weird, clean, humid, rocks. Just, *sigh*.

This is probably needless to say, but a self-guided tour that is supposed to take an hour took me and Tim approximately 1:45 because we stop and look at everything and then we stop and look at it again.

We could have gone to the automobile museum for free with our cavern tickets, but by the time we got out we were starving.

Sixth Anniversary Lunch: Uncle Bucks, Patty Melt with fries and side salad, Chicken Fingers and fries (ordered off the grown-up menu, for real).

From this point, we pretty much just drove home. We stopped at a cute local used bookstore, but left early because it was invaded by a herd of twenty-something tourists with ONE annoying friend ("YOU GUYS, there are like, owls everywhere in here! What is with all these owls??? These owls are soooooooo creepy! Look, OMG there are more owls over here TOO! OMG you guys, these books all have Angela Lansbury's face on them, but with, like different backgrounds!!! Look! Look!")

Sixth Anniversary Dinner: Leftovers

I think it probably says just as much or more about our relationship that we came home, played wii, watched some Lost, almost caught the fireplace on fire in a bad way, did some laundry, and then read for a while and went to sleep. We spend a lot of time together. But at least we still like to.

"Fried eggs" made of stone. Neat, n'est pas?