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Places to go in Virginia.

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6 places

Shenandoah National Park Mountains

Shenandoah National Park

Front Royal, VA · Blue Ridge Mountains

Just 75 miles from Washington, D.C., Shenandoah strings 105 miles of Skyline Drive along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with more than 70 overlooks gazing out over the Shenandoah Valley and the rolling Virginia Piedmont. Beyond the road, over 500 miles of trails lead to waterfalls, granite summits, and quiet forests rich with deer, black bears, and wildflowers. It is a classic four-season escape, blazing with color in autumn and cool and green when the lowlands swelter in summer.

Mabry Mill Attractions

Mabry Mill

Meadows of Dan, VA · Virginia Blue Ridge

At Blue Ridge Parkway milepost 176, Ed Mabry's water-powered gristmill stands mirrored in its still millpond, the overshot wheel and wooden flume doubled in the dark water. It is the most-photographed spot on the whole Parkway, and in autumn the red maples behind it make it almost unfair. Come for the old-time crafts demonstrations along the trail, and stay for the buckwheat pancakes at the restaurant next door.

McAfee Knob Mountains

McAfee Knob

Catawba, VA · Roanoke

The cantilevered rock ledge that juts straight out over the Catawba Valley near Roanoke, a stone diving board with nothing but open air beneath your boots. It is the most photographed spot on the entire Appalachian Trail, and the walk out earns it: a roughly 8-mile round trip up Catawba Mountain to the lip. Time it for sunrise or the last light and the ridgelines stack up blue all the way to the horizon.

Natural Bridge Attractions

Natural Bridge

Natural Bridge, VA · Shenandoah Valley

Cedar Creek spent untold millennia carving this 215-foot limestone arch, leaving a span so improbable that a young surveyor named George Washington reportedly scaled the wall to leave his initials, and Thomas Jefferson thought it worth buying outright in 1774. Today it anchors a Virginia state park where a riverside trail leads you under the soaring stone and on toward Cedar Creek's falls and the saltpeter cave beyond. Stand directly beneath the arch and the scale rearranges your sense of what water and time can do.

Peaks of Otter Mountains

Peaks of Otter

Bedford, VA · Virginia Blue Ridge

Three Blue Ridge summits, Sharp Top, Flat Top, and Harkening Hill, ring the still water of Abbott Lake at Parkway milepost 85.6, with the old Peaks of Otter Lodge sitting right on the shore above Bedford. Sharp Top is the one everyone wants: a steep rocky scramble to the near-bald summit, or a National Park shuttle van that carries you most of the way up to the boulders and the long view back toward the lodge. Walk the flat mile of lake loop first, then climb, then come back down to a porch rocker and the peaks doubled in the water.

Luray Caverns Caves

Luray Caverns

Luray, VA · Shenandoah Valley

Discovered in 1878 and lit ever since, Luray Caverns runs cathedral-deep under the Shenandoah Valley, where 50-foot columns and the rippling stone drapery of Saracen's Tent rise out of a steady 54-degree dark. The showpiece is Dream Lake, a pool only twenty inches deep that sits so still it mirrors the stalactites overhead into a perfect double, so you genuinely cannot tell water from stone. Then there is the Great Stalacpipe Organ, the world's largest musical instrument, which taps tuned formations across three and a half acres of chamber to fill the cave with sound.