A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

It takes about 6 hours to get to Luray, Virginia, from Darien, Connecticut, and we left early so we would be able to get there while the caverns were still open—and, if not, we could tour them first thing in the morning, as long as we could find a nearby place to camp. Preferably, for free.

But first we had to get across the Hudson River, preferably without going through New York City again. Our best bet was the Tappan Zee Bridge, which was still in operation. The Tappan Zee Bridge, officially known as the Governor Malcolm Wilson Tappan Zee Bridge, was a significant cantilever bridge in New York State. It spanned the Hudson River at one of its widest points, connecting South Nyack in Rockland County with Tarrytown in Westchester County. The bridge was named after the Tappan Native American tribe and the Dutch word zee, meaning sea, referring to the wide expanse of the river it crossed.

Construction of the original bridge began in March 1952, and it opened to traffic on December 15, 1955. It was designed to handle a maximum of 100,000 vehicles per day but by the 2000s, it was carrying an average of 140,000 vehicles daily. This heavy usage led to significant wear and tear over the years, which is why it had to be replaced. The new bridge, with a different name, opened in 2017 but people still called it the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Eventually we got to Virginia, and I-81. This highway was supposed to have been finished, and our map said it was; but in reality there were many sections still under construction. Still, you couldn't say the views from the road weren't spectacular!

But, despite all that, we managed to get to Luray before the caverns closed, mainly because the last tour was at six. (I had assumed a 5 PM closing time.) So we took it!

Now, of course I wanted to take photos. I had my camera, but hadn't realized it was on its last frame of film, and I'd left the new roll in the car. However, in the 1960s, color slides were a popular souvenir item sold at tourist attractions, including Luray Caverns. Visitors could purchase strips of slides as a way to remember their experience without the need for a camera or the skills to capture the beauty themselves. These slides featured professionally taken photographs of the attraction's highlights, allowing tourists to bring home a piece of their adventure in a format that could be easily mixed in with their own travel slides and viewed on a slide projector at home.

Which I did. To be honest, I can download far superior photos of Luray Caverns from the web. But for historical accuracy, here are the five color slides I purchased in the gift shop on our way out, for (as I recall) $1.25.

Now, across the road from the entrance to the caverns, was a bare dirt area on which people were camping. There weren't many RVs in those days, but a number of families had pitched tents on this area. And it was unmanaged, meaning there was no charge! So that was good. However, it was actually somewhat crowded. And I wasn't looking forward to trying to sleep on that rock-hard ground.

So here's where any experienced camper would start to see red flags. The bare area inclined down into a sort of gully, where there were bunches of thick, waving, green grass. And it just looked so soft. And that's where I wanted to put the tent.

And Chris, with even less experience camping than I had, agreed.

So, on the soft grassy ground, we went to sleep beneath a sky of brilliant stars, and only one cloud on the horizon. We slept deeply, without a thought as to what creates "gullies" and why would lush, tall grass grow at the bottom of one.

The next thing either of us knew, we were engulfed by water, the tent was being dragged by a flash flood with us in it, entangled in our sleeping bags and the tent itself. Somehow we both got out without drowning. Somehow we managed to drag our sleeping bags and tent out of the flood. Luckily, most of our gear had been left in the car, parked up where all the smart people had camped.

I mean, if I had only thought about it. Why was the grass in that gully so green? When it rains, where else would the water go? And why hadn't I realized the rills and gullies in the packed ground above the result of erosion from probably frequent rains?

It was, according to the clock in my car, 4:10 AM. Obviously we weren't going to get any more sleep this night. And if we wanted to get any the next night, we were going to have to get this crap dried before then.

I remembered having seen a laundromat in the little town on our way to the caverns and we headed for that.

Luray being such a small town, I had figured we'd have to wait for the laundromat to open. I was hoping that might happen as soon as 7. But it was actually a 24-hour laundry! So Chris and I gathered all our change and loaded our incredibly heavy, drenching wet sleeping bags, as well as the clothes we'd been wearing, into driers.

Yeah, and no, I either didn't think of running the bags through a washer to spin them drier, or didn't want to waste money on a whole wash cycle when all I wanted was the spin. (I'm OCD about such things.) So our stuff was all loaded into driers, and I had a quarter left over. And the laundromat had a jukebox!

Yes, a good old-fashioned Wurlitzer loaded up with the latest in 45s. And there was a new hit, a favorite, by the group The Archies.

The Archies were a fictional band made up of characters from the Archie Comics universe. They were created for a Saturday morning cartoon show called The Archie Show, which aired in the late 1960s. The band consisted of Archie Andrews on guitar and lead vocals, Reggie Mantle on bass, Jughead Jones on drums, Veronica Lodge on keyboard, and Betty Cooper on tambourine and backup vocals. Even though they were cartoon characters, The Archies had real hit songs, with their most famous being Sugar, Sugar. It was a catchy tune that became a number-one hit in real life, and many people loved to sing and dance along to it.

So that's the one I spent my last quarter on.

And Chris and I listened and sang along while our sleeping bags dried. And the jukebox got to the end of the song.

And it started to play again.

And when the song finished, it started to play again!

Apparently the jukebox was broken. And, as the hour went by and the song continued to play over and over and over and over, it quickly went from being catchy to being grounds for murder.

And then, adding insult to injury, the dryer stopped… And our sleeping bags were still wet!

So now, we had to wait until the bank across the street opened, so I could break a fiver and get change. (Yes, that's right; there was no change machine in the laundromat in 1969!) Luckily I didn't have to wait until 9 AM; a little restaurant next door opened at 7. So we refueled the dryers and napped in the car while we waited for the sleeping bags to be done, so we could actually start our next-to-the-last-day.