Shenandoah Caverns, Green Valley Book Fair, etc

Last month, my brother, Tim and I went on a little day trip one Saturday. The main point of the trip was to go to the Green Valley Book Fair and then to eat at Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint in Harrisonburg, VA. 

We stopped at Buc-ee’s on the way to get gas and use the restroom (it also happened to be close to the book fair). This is the first Buc-ee’s in Virginia and it had just opened a few weeks before this so it was super busy. (Although I think a lot of Buc-ee’s are super busy). It was quite overwhelming.

I didn’t get any pictures at the Green Valley Book Fair. But it’s a large old barn that was converted into a book fair. It’s fun to look around because there are so many books! Even though in the past I’ve often found multiple books to buy, this time I only bought one book. 

After the book fair, I wanted to go to Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint to try their burgers again. In case you didn’t know this is where me becoming a little bit of a burger snob started. 🤣

You can read, my initial post about visiting Jack Brown’s here. Then I wrote a follow up post a few years later with notes about burger places I’d visited. You can read about that here. 

I was really excited to try Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint again to see if it was the same as I remember.

I must admit, I was quite disappointed by my burger this time. Jack Brown’s has definitely changed the way they make the burgers and it was not as juicy or as flavorful as the burger I had in 2014.

I know a lot can change for a restaurant in 11 years so it’s understandable. It was a little disappointing to me, though. Oh well, I still can dream about that one burger I had 11 years ago. 😋😂

I will say, though, their sweet potato fries were delicious!

After lunch, we got ice cream at a nearby ice cream shop, Kline’s Dairy Bar. This shop only has one to two flavors a week.

This week it was Honey Vanilla Crunch and I think Banana. I got Honey Vanilla Crunch and it was delicious! 

On our way to the book fair we kept on seeing signs for different caverns in the area. After lunch we had nothing else planned, so we decided to go to one of the caverns. 

We found this statue kind of creepy but still went ahead and visited the caverns. 😂

It cost a little bit to go in but it was a fun tour! This is a picture of cave bacon. 

These two structures are really close to touching, but are not yet touching. The tour guide said it will probably be another 10-15 years before they become one (even though they look so close now). 

A big boulder inside the cave. Pictures don’t really do the cave justice. It looks a lot cooler in real life. 

In front of the boulder from the picture above. 

The cave visitor's center had a mini post office. I bought some postcards from the gift shop and stamps from the post office and sent some postcards to a few family members from here. 

There was a little museum inside of the visitor's center and honestly it was a little creepy. These bears were the best part though. They actually moved and talked. 

The rest of the museum I could have done without. Oh well. I wanted to see everything since we were there and I probably won't go back again. 🤷😂

Some interesting statues close to the cave visitor's center. 

Tim had looked up things to do near the cave and found this cool covered bridge to visit, Meem's Bottom Covered Bridge. 

We parked near the bridge and this was the scenery around the bridge. 

So pretty!

Meem's Bottom Covered Bridge. 

I really enjoyed this day trip. It was a fun day and nice to have a change of scenery!

Photo Books

When I was a teenager I liked to scrapbook. I have multiple scrapbooks I made in my teens and early twenties. Honestly when I look at them now, I realize I was a very basic scrapbooker. All I did was tape or glue stick multiple pictures onto the front and back of cardstock and label who was in the picture, where it was located and the year. I didn’t have many pretty embellishments in my scrapbooks. 

An example of my basic scrapbooking from my early twenties. 

I stopped making scrapbooks in my twenties sometime, though, probably when digital photos became more of a thing and we didn’t have to take our rolls of film to be developed. The pictures were just on our camera or on a computer. 

Even though I have this blog (which I could consider an online scrapbook), during Covid I wanted to make physical photo books again. I didn’t want to buy all of the materials for actual scrapbooking, but I had heard about a couple of websites where you could upload your pictures, organize them in an online book and then they print it off and send it to you.

During Covid, I made a few photo books of previous trips I’d been on using mixbook.com. I sent copies of those photo books to the people I went on those trips with too. 

But then I stopped making photo books for a couple of years. But just a few weeks ago I had the urge to make another photo book, a book of my Europe trip last year that I went on with my brother, Tim. 

I love the way it turned out and wanted to share a few pages of the book!

The front cover

The back cover

Some Copenhagen pictures

More Copenhagen pictures

Kinderdijk pictures

Luxembourg pictures

The photo book has over 130 pages. But since it’s a printed book, the book is definitely slimmer than a scrapbook would have been with the same amount of pictures.

I like the photo books I have made online (especially my most recent one)! I find making the photo books online easier (once I got used to the website) and a little less time consuming than regular scrapbooking. I’m glad for these online services that are user friendly and will print the photo books for me.