Skyline Drive and a Hedge Maze

We're back from our trip and very glad to be. Always great to get home from anywhere. I have enough pictures for two more trip blogs, and will cover Luray Caverns tomorrow. Today it's the Skyline Drive and the Hedge Maze at Luray.

My little Honda Insight has done very well for us on this trip, and come through without a scratch, and getting about 47 mpg on average, even with all the hills. We did one last day of hill driving Wednesday, taking the Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park to Luray. The views were similar to those on the Blue Ridge Parkway, of which this is essentially the top third, though the elevations are lower and the mountains more rounded. We enjoyed it, but again found it somewhat less compelling than the highest parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We stopped for a steep but fairly short hike to see Dark Hollow Falls, about 1.5 miles round trip, but most of that either up or down. Not bad, though, and the falls are pretty.

The day was sunny with little wind, and the butterflies were out putting on a show for us. We saw this Orange Sulphur first.

Then a handsome Mourning Cloak.

As if that weren't enough we later had a Disney Moment as this very friendly Anglewing Butterfly landed on Ellen's hand and stayed there for several minutes!

There are two Anglewing species in the Eastern U.S. that look quite similar from above…

…but on the underside is a distinctive white mark, as demonstrated! This one is clearly an Eastern Comma with a white semicircle. The other species, Question Mark, adds a white dot below. Clear markings on butterflies are rare, and these two are also named for punctuation, which is something I approve of!

When we got to Luray we had two things we wanted to do. The famous Caverns, of course, but also this relatively new Garden Maze.

This is only the second hedge maze I've been in, the other being at Hampton Court in England. That one is privet hedges, this one is yew, and lacks the historic backdrop, but otherwise is equally entertaining.

So many choices, and people do go both ways! I used my maze-making knowledge to get us to the center quickly, but that eliminated another aspect of this maze:

You're given a card that is supposed to be stamped at four Goal stations in the maze. Ellen wanted to do that, so we ended up walking every path in the maze at least twice to find all four Goals and even needed to look at "Help" hints a few times to find them all and the exit. It was fun, and we were there for about an hour, so well worth the entry fee.

Luray Caverns tomorrow.