To the west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the beautiful Shenandoah Valley stretches for more than 200 miles from Winchester in the north to Roanoke in the south. Viewed from Skyline Drive, the valley (whose name means “DAUGHTER OF THE STARS”) presents a broad, colorful patchwork of vineyards, apple orchards, emerald pastures, and field of grain.

An ancient sea that left behind spectacular limestone formation, including the famous Natural Bridge and Luray Caverns carved the valley. In the early 1800’s, Grand Caverns was the scene of candlelit dances held in a ballroom - sized “grand hall”, and during the Civil War, Stonewall Jackson’s troops camped in the caves. No corner of Virginia - not even its darkest subterranean realms - has remained untouched by the pageant of American History.

South of Front Royal, in the Shenandoah Valley, are carves containing lovely and mysterious underground treasures. Called anthodites by geologists, these mineral formations, found on the ceilings of rooms in Skyline Caverns, are popularly known as cave flowers.

The formations grow in fragile clusters made up of thin needles of snow - white calcite up to four inches long. The slender projections radiate in all directions, defying the law gravity, and the shapes they take suggest delicate blossoms.

Estimated to grow at a rate of only inch year are, to say the least, irreplaceable. To reach them, visitors must pass through a double set of doors, which keep bats from entering the chamber and causing damage. If well cared for, the cave flowers will e on view for some time to come - perhaps even seven millennia from now, when they will be an inch linger.

Virginia is dubbed the Mother of States because land from its original territory now makes up, wholly or in part, the states of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.