Gullible's Travels V: Still Natural Bridgin' It

Still Wednesday.
Last week, not tomorrow.
Next up on our VIP Passes-to-Everything at the Natural Bridge Park was the Haunted Monster Museum/Dinosaur Kingdom.
What a delightful, craptastic little place!
I imagine this place would be absolutely amazing around Halloween.


Here's me at the entrance to the Haunted Museum.

Then we had to wind our way up a creepy little path made of old, distressed asphalt.

ooooooohhhh...
Here's Steven in the haunted cemetery on the way up to the haunted museum.

Can't you just sense the hair-raising predicament we're about to get into?

Is it just me, or does that headstone look like a penis?
I can't tell if Steven is spooked by the cemetery or excited by the penis-headstone...

Come visit Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum, set up in a stone house that was originally called the Stonewall Inn. It was built around 1870 and was used as a hunting lodge and summer mountain retreat until the early 1970's, when the Inn was closed.
At the Haunted Monster Museum you will experience Professor Cline's work displayed haunted house style. Visitor's say it's Bizarre and unique, like Scooby Doo meets the Twilight Zone.

I have to hand it to our tour guide. He was a pretty good actor. It's hard to pull off "creepy, psychotic, redneck, inbred, serial killer, tour guide" without looking like an actor, but he did it pretty well. Plus the giant tattoo of Garfield on his arm was a bonus treat.
When the mom in our tour group was trying to rationalize to her screaming, wailing, hysterical daughter, "How scary can he be with a tattoo of Garfield on his arm?"
His response was, "The arm is not original equipment."
Nice.

Also, little did we know that our "museum experience" was being videotaped for our enjoyment/purchase, because like a real theme park you can't exit without walking by the booth to get suckered in to buying your cheesy video for $10.
I thought, "Hey, why not? We're suckers, and they're starving actors trying to make a buck. Let's buy it!"
And then we even dropped a couple of bucks in the tip bucket, too, on behalf of all actors everywhere trying to enjoy life.

Good times.

Then we went to the Wax Museum.
The Wax Museum is directly adjacent to the main building for the Natural Bridge park.
As we drove up, with the giant "Wax Museum" sign completely visible, Steven asks with a little more than mild irritation in his voice, "Why is that dumb kid swinging on that rope?"


Oh, that's priceless, folks.

It's still funny now, almost a week later.

Only one person in this picture is real.
Two are wax.
Can you tell which is which?

I know, I know, my ass gives it away.

The Wax Museum was neat, but a little Jesus-centric, which I found to be slightly disturbing.
From the website:
"The Natural Bridge Wax Museum features scenes of Virginia and Natural Bridge history where the curtain opens on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Confederacy, all perched on narrated sets."
Why, then, is the largest and most involved exhibit a complete recreation of "The Last Supper"?
Last time I checked, that did not (allegedly) take place in Virginia.
Sounds like another lie to me.

Hey, is this a shrine to me?
...or is it the Natural Bridge Toy Museum?

Unfortunately, it's the Natural Bridge Toy Museum. Basically it looked like Steve Carell's living room in The 40 Year Old Virgin. The shrine to me might have been slightly more exciting.

The only interesting things about it were the early Colonial-era and Victorian-era toys, and the early to mid-20th Century stuff.
Otherwise it was just a reminiscent walk down memory lane, mostly filled with toys from the 80s, 90s, and today.


From here, we walked down the trail to the Natural Bridge, hiked along the Cedar Creek Trail, saw the Saltpetre Cave, the Lost River, and the Lace Falls.
It was all beautiful and amazing and spectacular...yadda yadda yadda, I'm tired of posting pictures right now.
The Monacan Indian village was closed, so then we hiked back to Peppermint Patty and made our way back to Roanoke.

The rest of the evening was spent enjoying pizza and family outside on the back deck, and of course the trip would not have been complete without another game of Cranium™©®.

Next episode: Trek home with mystery and mountains and a lesbian swiss village, oh my!