The Natural Bridge

This morning we said good-bye to North Carolina and passed into Virginia.  We are still in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the roads, even the inter-states, are curvy and gain and lose elevation on some pretty steep grades. When you get off on the secondary roads its all following the contour of the mountains and valleys.  The scenery is beautiful and interesting, but there's no just sitting back and enjoying it.

In our continuing series of state Welcome Centers, today we offer up Virginia. (I had a nice pano of the Welcome Center grounds but the internet is so slow here that it takes over 5 minutes to download a regular photo and the pano just got hung-up.)

The back side of the Welcoming Center coming into Virginia on I-77.

For some reason they had this "LOVE" sculpture on the front lawn.

There were tons of people at the VC because of the Memorial Day weekend. We are expecting our traveling and campground experiences to change now that the summer vacation period is here.  It is good to see kids running around and having fun; better then just the old, retired people we have become accustomed to seeing.

It was a long drive from Pilot Mountain to Clifton Forge, Virginia, about 150 miles. Once we unhitched and had our lunch we got back in the car to drive another 80 miles to visit Virginia's geo-site - The Natural Bridge. 

During the early years of the Paleozoic era, the eastern portion of proto-North America was basking in an extended period of quiescence. The dominant geologic event centered on a continuing rise in sea level, causing a widespread invasion of the continental interior. Geologists have named this salt-water inundation the Sauk Sea; it was a sub portion of the much larger Iapetus Ocean (mentioned in yesterday's blog)-- precursor to the Atlantic Ocean. These warm oceanic waters deposited thick sequences of carbonate sediment, which later indurated into limestone and dolomite rock formations. This is the principle bedrock of the Great Appalachian Valley and its related karst topography. 

One of these intriguing karst landmarks of Virginia is Natural Bridge. The vital statistics of this historic and most famous natural bridge in America, if not in the world, are impressive. The top of the bridge is 215 feet above the landscape below. Its 90-foot-long span is 50 to 100 feet wide and 50 feet thick. 

In 1794, Thomas Jefferson, the bridge's first owner, described it as a "convulsion of nature." Today, there is general agreement that both surface and subterranean aspects of river erosion, closely associated with the history of Cedar Creek, the stream that placidly flows under the arch, created Natural Bridge. Several million years ago Cedar Creek was diverted into a subterranean course. With the passage of time dissolution extended this captive drainage, the final effect being the creation of a tunnel. Most of the tunnel roof long ago collapsed, leaving Natural Bridge as evidence of this remarkable sequence of events. In the not too distant geologic future this segment will also crumble to rubble, most probably the result of the continuing freeze-thaw process in which water freezes in cracks and wedges rock apart. 

It was fascinating to visit this site which is privately owned. When we inquired who owned the site, the staff, somewhat defensively, named an innocuous sounding group, the Virginia Conservation something something. I asked if it was written down somewhere and I was told "No". I asked if it was on a website and got the same answer. However, I was told that it will become a Virginia State Park in the near future. But the experience of visiting a commercial enterprise was certainly different from visiting a state park.

Your get to the Bridge by going into this building, buying a (pricey) ticket, and exiting out the back door to a trail down to the Bridge site.  There is a shuttle bus that will drive you down, but we opted to go down the stairs - 137 steps. We also climbed back up the steps!

You know you are in for ticket-shock when there is an ATM machine right by the front door

This is the Welcoming Center, not full of informative exhibits, but commercial outlets.

All that aside, Natural Bridge is one impressive structure! It was much more impressive than I had imagined. Notice how tiny the people are in the background.

Spock was most impressed

This is Cedar Creek flowing under the Bridge.

Beyond the Bridge, you can follow Cedar Creek Trail to Lace Falls. (3/4 mile)

Lace Falls.

Tilted sedimentary rocks forming the bed of the Creek.

Although the picture is no very clear, inside the rectangle in the center of the picture, are the initials of George Washington. He supposedly came to survey this site and climbed 27 feet up the wall and carved "GW" in the side of the wall of the arch. 

These young fellows hiked the trail with us.  The tall one was so taken by our photographing the Bridge with Mr. Spock that he asked if he could have his picture taken with Spock.  He was using an iPad to take pictures.