Viewing Parade Floats

Adjacent to Shenandoah Caverns is American Celebration on Parade, a warehouse-sized museum of colorful parade floats. You can get tickets to it separately if you don't want to tour the cavern.

Below we see Frank's grandsons in a caboose.


Here little Josie stares at giant bunnies.

Earl the Goat

There are two goats at Shenandoah Caverns and sunflower seed to feed them.

Swinging Marionettes

Did you know that a museum near us has a great collection of old animated department store displays?

This circus scene fascinated me in its endlessly-swinging weirdness.

Animated Scenes

When we visited Shenandoah Caverns, we also saw it's adjacent attractions. They included parade floats, ornate displays from department store windows, and some farm-related items. When I was a kid, it was a big deal to look at department store windows in the weeks before Christmas. Below is a circus scene as preserved at Main Street of Yesteryear.

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Our guests have left

Below: Pool at Orkney Springs. A squirrel is on the tree to the left.

Our house is quiet again except for the sounds of the washer and dryer. Frank's daughters and the children have left.

I still have photos of their visit to post so watch for them over the next few days. Also, Susan is posting pictures on the Ryley-Sue-Doug-Josie blog.

Allison and Frank

Cousins at the Caverns

More pictures from our visit to Shenandoah Caverns.
Tallest to Shortest: Austin, Justin, Ryley, Josie.

Below: The Giant Cootie with the kids and Susan

Justin and the Singing Hamster

Since a Kung Fu Singing Hamster was popular with grandkids a few years ago, I bought its cousin for this week's visit. Susan got really tired of listening to it - wonder why?

Group Photos

Cave formations

Seen at Shenandoah Caverns
Near Mt. Jackson, Virginia

Come See Follow Me

Susan and I took the kids to Shenandoah Caverns. They seemed quite interested. Austin and Justin were protective of their young cousins.

Below is formation called bacon, for obvious reasons. The kids spotted plenty of bacon throughout the caverns.

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Back to the playground

Austin and Justin arrived today and joined their cousins for some fun at the playground.

A visit from Rysujo

Looking down from Woodstock Tower

It's an odd photo but I like it.

The usual photographic view from the tower is of the Shenandoah Valley with the river snaking through it -- quite lovely on a clear day.

If you want to visit Woodstock Tower, I suggest driving into Fort Valley (a lovely place) and taking the road up to the tower from there. It's not as steep and twisty there as it is on the Woodstock side of the mountain, which frankly I found scary.

Around the Pond

Orkney Springs,
July 28, 2007.

Another concert

We went to Orkney Springs for another concert. We heard the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra play music by Gershwin. Unlike last week's show, it was sold out.

The couple next to us had driven all the way from Alexandria for the concert. We felt fortunate to have driven less than 15 minutes to get there.

Flowers from another season

I came across this photo from a few years ago. It was the last frame of a film roll and partly cut off so it needed to be Photoshop'd just to be suitable for printing. I couldn't resist brightening it a bit.

Here's Ben!

Ben's trainer theorized that his sometimes erratic behavior could be caused by a physical problem, so this week we took him to the vet for tests. They did a blood test that included a thyroid screening and found nothing. However, he had lost 2 pounds but is still overweight.

Searching for a Squirrel?

I like to check my site statistics to see what search terms are bringing people here. Often people are looking for a phrase that does not appear in my blog, but the individual words appear separately in one of my entries. Often the word squirrel is part of the phrase, as of course, it appears in my blog title. Here are some of the phrases that have showed up recently:

• squirrels happy birthday


• squirrels martial arts


• how to lure a squirrel back home


• squirrel allergies


• CPR for squirrel

As intriguing as these ideas are, they are not covered in my blog - sorry!

Disclaimer: I don't actually live on Squirrel Ridge, so "The View from Squirrel Ridge" is an fanciful name for this blog. When I made up the title, I was living across the resort on a ridge that had no name that I was aware of and we had a lot of squirrels, so I called it Squirrel Ridge. Last year we moved to Supinlick Ridge but I didn't change the blog name. After all, we have squirrels here too!

One search phrase that does occur on this blog: Staring squirrel.

Purple beans

I got some purple string beans from Deauville Farm on Crooked Run Road. They taste like regular green beans - sweeter than canned beans, of course.

When I cooked them, they turned green.