Liz’s Birthday 2023, Day 3: Travel to Luray

April 24, 2023

It couldn’t be avoided, but I got us on an early flight (Midway > Dulles). Liz is not an early morning person, but was able to get up early for a ride to Midway… all in time for a 9:30 AM flight.

It’s been a while since I’ve been on a plane. Usually when it’s been a while since I’ve flown, I tend to have the same feeling waiting to board. I look around, and think to myself “So these are the people I’m going to die next to.”

On arriving at Dulles, we got our car rental and headed to our destination. On the way there, we made a slight detour for lunch (about 30 minutes away), at The Black Sheep.

We got there ahead of schedule, but I was a little put out that they made us wait about 20 minutes before they could seat us. As we walked to our table, there were maybe 5 or 6 other tables occupied, that’s it. Not really clear why we had to wait.

The interior though, was spectacular. And our server was incredibly friendly/nice.

We found out the space is part of several other buildings, all owned by the same folks. There’s also a brewery, along with a performance area. Everything was incredibly clean/new, and looked to be a really great idea.

On our way to Luray, VA.

At this point, Liz got more details about the next few days. I have us hiking in Shenandoah National Park, with us staying in nearby Luray, VA.

There are four entrances to Shenandoah, and I chose Luray because it seemed the closest in terms of home-to-park time. All told, we were about 15 minutes away from the Thornton Gap entrance, which seemed pretty good.

I booked a room for us at Hotel Laurance, in Luray. A really interesting thing about this hotel: there’s not really staff around, at least not really. All of our interactions have been through email, and on arriving… through text. The doors are all code-based, and this includes our room as well as access to the main building/rooms.

On arriving, we checked out the main building/area. It slowly dawned on us that we were the only people at the hotel.

A really gorgeous main sitting room.

After unpacking and looking around, we did a quick inventory of the things in our room… and headed out to do a bit of shopping. We stopped at a local Walmart and picked up water/food/snacks for our hikes, as well as some food for the room (it has a small kitchen, along with a fridge, microwave, and stove).

I say this with kindness and understanding: there are not a lot of dinner options in Luray. I did an awful lot of searching around. And while there were some fast food options, not a ton of greaet sit-down places I could find.

I saw so few options on our first night, I was debating cooking pasta for dinner. But on arriving, was feeling tired and decided to roll the dice on a nearby Italian place. Which, according to their website, said they were open. But when we called and then later tried to drive by, it was completely empty (and looked to have been closed a while).

We ended up ordering some pizza delivery nearby, and that worked out pretty well.

We returned to the main room after our shopping, and hung out with a little whisky and pizza to make our plans. I shared with Liz some of the hiking trails I researched, and we compared maps and online photos.