Natural Bridge Virginia, a very good place to start...

If you follow me on Instagram you know we recently got home from our incredible ten day road trip to Salem, Massachusetts and back! We had the best time and saw so many amazing things! First of all, thank you to everyone who sent us tips on places to go! We used so many and the rest are still in my places to go file. Even with ten days we weren't able to see everything I wanted to see! I was pretty ambitious in my planning! (as usual!) So here we go, the first post of many....

We left on a Friday around 7 pm. I had planned to hit the road around 2 but things beyond our control kept us in town. It was really irritating at the time! We made it through Knoxville, TN just in time to pick up a to go order from Tomato Head, and then trucked on to Wythville, VA for our first nights stay. That town was kind of a random pick. I knew we wouldn't make it all the way to Washington, DC that first night, also Wythville is the home of a giant pencil...

A perfect first stop for our trip! Over the course of 10 days we drove almost 2,700 miles. It was almost all beautiful though. We heard we missed the peak season for the leaves, but it was still gorgeous everywhere we went.

Next we went to Foamhenge. I have wanted to visit for YEARS! It was a little hard to find. We actually stopped at the Natural Bridge visitors center to ask. Travis was waiting to ask a volunteer when the man in front of him said, "I've already seen the natural bridge, is there anything else to do?" and she asked "Well, did you see Foamhenge?" Haha, perfect timing! He must not have been interested because we didn't see him once we got to the wonder.
Foamhenge is the work of artist Mark Cline, who is my kind of weirdo! You can read what he said to say about it at that link above.

So cool!

There were a bunch of these great signs around: "I'm nuts enough to do it!"

I had never been to Virginia (Travis has hiked here before) and it was so beautiful. I never got a photo but as you approach Foamhenge you can see the Blue Ridge Mountains (I think?) stretching all around it.

Another thing I loved was this fiberglass wizard! He is cool just as he is, but when you read the sign you can see his face was made from a death mask Mark Cline took of one of his friends. What a cool way to be remembered!

We were searching for this King Kong and finally found him behind the gate of the now defunct Enchanted Castle Studios. Mark Cline again, he used to host tours of his workshop where he made amazing fiberglass creatures! I'm so sad it isn't open anymore.

I bet the tour was the best! We actually saw another guy around our age with a camera around his next standing in front of this place. He said "Are you guys looking for Foamhenge too?" We gave him directions and were happy to meet a fellow wacky tacky lover on the road!

There are some convenient holes for peeking through. It looks like it hasn't been touched in a long time, but there  was a building permit from this year so maybe he will revive the tours! If you like this kind of stuff, take some time and poke around his website. I'm so sad so many of them were lost to arson! If we had been in town that night, we would have totally taken his ghost tour!

I wanted to wander around back there so bad! See the big robot? And the T-Rex head!

Thankfully this beautiful tick monster is still outside the fence for photo ops.

The old tour entrance. And an elephant that is down the road at the Natural Bridge Zoo. We made a quick tour of the gift shop because I was SURE they would have a smashed penny machine. No such luck.

I love a nut pun and a squirrel sign! And tons of fake cobwebs!

We stopped in Harrisonburg, VA for lunch at Blue Nile Ethiopian. When I went to find their website it turns out they closed two days after we ate lunch there! Weird! They had a buffet and it was great!

Travis LOVES Ethiopian food. We live very close to Gojo in Nashville and he always wants to eat there, and I rarely do, so I made sure to get some Ethiopian in while planning our route. The yellow stuff was my favorite. I couldn't tell you what it was called, I don't remember!

There were some cute old buildings in Harrisonburg, I can never resist taking photos of old signs.

Look at this place! It's hard to tell here, but the walls are pink and white checkerboard tiles! And look at that thing in the middle of the roof! Cute!

I would have loved to put this sign in the back of our rental car so I could mount it in our front yard.

Also look at this giant vegan cupcake I ate! Yum! It is actually from Tomato Head. I realized that I'm not the type who can eat a giant cupcake at 11 pm. So I saved it. Mmmmm.

Stay tuned for our journey through one of the many caverns to be found in Virginia...not Endless Caverns though. I loved their sign! You can see it stuck there in the side of the mountain for a LONG time. So cute! It made me think of a train set!