This review includes a look at the natural bridge itself and the nearby caves. We took this trip in late June 2017.
Last year we traveled to the natural bridge in Kentucky and liked the setting so well -- including the hotel’s relaxing lounge setting and its restaurant -- that we considered traveling back for a couple more days this summer on a loop through Virginia and up to Pennsylvania to see friends and family. But as we planned the trip, we learned that Virginia, too, has a natural bridge stone formation. So after checking out the website for the Natural Bridge Historic Hotel & Conference Center, we decided to try something new.
When we finally arrived at the Natural Bridge Hotel, we had more than 13 hours of travel behind us thanks to a couple long stops and some detours. I’d been driving through the mountains in the dark for the last 45 minutes, unsure exactly where we were going because of the lack of data in the mountains for our smartphone maps. We couldn’t wait to crash into bed.
But as we entered our hotel room, we discovered what was really a run-down motel room. Now don’t judge the hotel on that statement -- read on so you know what we really experienced and what I recommend if you travel here.
First, the hotel's layout. According to the Accommodations page, the hotel has “152 rooms offered in three different styles of rooms [and] fifteen cottages.” I don't know much about the cottages, and couldn't find details about them on the website. Meanwhile, the Guest Rooms page claims that the main building has 88 rooms plus 2 suites and that the annex has 30 rooms. That's a total of 120. Even with 15 cottages, I don't know how there's also 152 rooms ... so there seems to be some discrepancy.
When we finally arrived at the Natural Bridge Hotel, we had more than 13 hours of travel behind us thanks to a couple long stops and some detours. I’d been driving through the mountains in the dark for the last 45 minutes, unsure exactly where we were going because of the lack of data in the mountains for our smartphone maps. We couldn’t wait to crash into bed.
But as we entered our hotel room, we discovered what was really a run-down motel room. Now don’t judge the hotel on that statement -- read on so you know what we really experienced and what I recommend if you travel here.
First, the hotel's layout. According to the Accommodations page, the hotel has “152 rooms offered in three different styles of rooms [and] fifteen cottages.” I don't know much about the cottages, and couldn't find details about them on the website. Meanwhile, the Guest Rooms page claims that the main building has 88 rooms plus 2 suites and that the annex has 30 rooms. That's a total of 120. Even with 15 cottages, I don't know how there's also 152 rooms ... so there seems to be some discrepancy.
An artist's rendering of the hotel layout -- the actual hotel is 3 stories high.
In any case, the point for the traveler is that the rest of the rooms are divided between those in the main inn (right side in the image) and those in the annex building (left side in the image) -- a second building not directly connected to the inn, so you have to walk a short distance if you want to reach the lobby or on-site restaurant. Not a big deal, especially if the weather is nice.
We thought this was the reason that these rooms were a little less, and we were sold on the fact that all of these rooms supposedly had mountain views (what we were told by phone), so we gladly booked there, not worried about the one-minute walk to the lobby.
What we didn’t really grasp from the website (even though I now see it says so) is that these rooms open directly to the outdoors. So like any motel that does the same, bugs can and do get directly into the room as well. Before going to bed we had several to get rid of. (There is also no elevator to the upper rooms, which can be important if you have large luggage, kids in strollers, someone in a wheelchair, etc. They also explain this on the website.)
But that wasn’t all. The room was like a comedy of errors.
- First we noticed mold in the shower. Then ...
- A long, apparently well established spider web hanging from the bathroom ceiling.
- An overall musty smell to the room.
- A “collapsing toilet seat” -- be careful as you’re going. It slides to the side and startles the heck out of you when it suddenly drops a half inch.
- The toilet made a monster noise when getting flushed. Same with the bathroom door when opening it. Forget about letting people sleep if you wanted to use the bathroom.
- An old, maybe 19" TV on the bureau? I didn’t measure it. It was funny to see when we’re so used to larger flat-screen TVs these days.
- A tiny desk between the beds -- not much for working on with a laptop if needed.
- A mattress that sagged in the middle. My wife and I are small people, but with the two of us in the bed, it felt like I’d be rolling into the middle. Luckily I did sleep pretty well, and one of my sons thought their mattress was comfortable.
- No outlets in the bathroom, nor near the only mirror in the main room. So my wife had to dry her hair without a mirror.
- No fridge. No coffee maker. The main lobby has coffee starting at 6 am if you need it, though it's not available all day.
- For some reason, we could see their WiFi signal from our room but couldn’t use it, even though we could use it in the lobby. :(
But here's where things got better ...
I spoke with the manager and showed her the picture of the mold and also mentioned that we’d been sold on a mountain view. She said that was strange, because they only say that of 2nd and 3rd floor rooms. (We were on the ground floor.) She was very apologetic and wanted to make it right -- she said the mold shouldn’t be there and offered us breakfast vouchers. She also said she would move us to another room immediately but that they were completely filled. She offered to upgrade us ASAP the next morning since we were staying for two nights.
I thanked her and took her up on the offers, but thinking the other rooms would be relatively similar, fell asleep that night thinking that I would just have to grin and bear it for the first two nights of our vacation.
The next morning when the sun was out, we looked out the windows to see if there was any kind of mountain view. We were so unsure of our surroundings that we didn’t even know which window to look out. Here’s what we saw out the back window:
And while I didn't get a snapshot directly from our front window, this was a view not far away in front of the hotel from ground level -- pretty, but no mountain views:
When we headed to breakfast, I was looking forward to browsing the menu and deciding between that and the buffet. Strangely, they only had one chef in the kitchen and said it would be a limited menu, so we all opted for the buffet, and this did the trick. I actually liked their coffee and had some pretty good scrambled eggs and potatoes along with fresh fruit. They had biscuits and gravy, grits, cooked cinnamon apples, cereal, muffins, a waffle bar, and more.
The one joke from breakfast came from the fact that, if I ever use maple syrup, it has to be real maple syrup. From a maple tree and nothing else. I discourage my kids from the fake stuff too. My son arrives at the table and tells me, “Syrup here is like the news.” LOL. Raised him well.
The Natural Bridge
Things continued getting better. While we waited for our new room, we did the thing we came here to do, and that was to visit the natural bridge. There’s a short tunnel beneath the road in front of the hotel and then you’re immediately at the Natural Bridge State Park building. Buy your tickets there (get a combination ticket to visit the nearby caves as well) and head down a flight of 137 steps (mostly outdoors) or take a 2-minute shuttle. Either gets you to the main path, and the bridge is practically right there.
Here's an overall layout, where you can see the hotel; the pathway beneath the road to the visitors center (1); the stairs down to the cafe (12); and the entire path to the natural bridge (14) and beyond to a small waterfall (19):
Here's an overall layout, where you can see the hotel; the pathway beneath the road to the visitors center (1); the stairs down to the cafe (12); and the entire path to the natural bridge (14) and beyond to a small waterfall (19):
A funny story before we get to the bridge itself. There was a sign giving a bit of history about the bridge, and you can see here that Thomas Jefferson once purchased the bridge and hundreds of surround acres for a sum of about $2.40 in today's money. Yes, that's what it says. He bought it from the King of England. Notice the date of purchase: July 5, 1774. In less than two years, he would author the Declaration of Independence and call that same king a tyrant. I'm a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, but I find that pretty funny.
Now if you're an English nerd like I am, you'll also notice the sign is flush with punctuation errors (including an "it's" when they mean "its") and grammar errors. Just things I feel you should check before producing an expensive sign that's not easily changed later on. And something that will be read by so many people. I mention this because it begins our story of sign errors to continue later on:
Now onto the bridge itself. The thing about the bridge is that you cannot capture its enormity in a picture. Even if people are in the image, you just can’t sense its grandeur without being there. (But do notice the tiny looking people in these images.) This is the main reason I would recommend visiting, especially if you love to experience the power of nature. The bridge gives you the sort of feeling that only nature can -- that you’re something very small in a very big world. It’s a body sensation that something massive can give you, but only when you’re there. Despite that, here are a few images where I’ve done my best to capture its magnitude:
Sorry to Kentucky, but our feeling was that its natural bridge held nothing to this one. This was an experience indeed. We wandered beneath it for probably 15 minutes, experiencing it from different angles. We then continued up the path where there was a small Native American learning experience, complete with a long-house, I think a wigwam, and more. We saw the Lost River and its little story, and saw the next edition of sign errors. (Notice how they spelled "attatched.")
And ok Kentucky ... your Lost River (including the cave tour) is quite a lot nicer than this little spectacle.
Now despite the sign's error, clearly we're establishing that it's not alone. Along with the issues on the natural bridge sign, we have another issue with "it's" just down the path at Lace Falls. Perhaps they're just quoting the original correctly, and Rev. Reed made the mistake?
But frankly, I'm not going to beat them up too much. I wasn't out looking for errors, but in Gettysburg a few days later, I catch this one missing a space between two words. Yes, this is what we geeks live through each and every day, noticing nonsense like this:
The Lace Falls themselves were definitely pretty, but so far from the observation deck that it was hard to really get a feel for them.
Back to the Hotel
When we returned around 11 am, the hotel had a new room ready for us and we moved over to it.
Night and day.
All I can say is that if you can afford the rooms in the main inn, go for it. You won’t get the bugs in the room. You won’t get any musty smells, which I just imagine are a problem throughout the annex. Except for a couple of 2-bedroom suites, the rooms are all basically the same size with options for one king or two double beds. One side of the hotel does not offer mountain views. The other side does, primarily on the second and third floors. And the second floor has balconies. Much of this review was written from a huge, shared (with 3 other rooms) balcony at the center of the hotel. All the other room balconies are fenced off to have their own:
Night and day.
All I can say is that if you can afford the rooms in the main inn, go for it. You won’t get the bugs in the room. You won’t get any musty smells, which I just imagine are a problem throughout the annex. Except for a couple of 2-bedroom suites, the rooms are all basically the same size with options for one king or two double beds. One side of the hotel does not offer mountain views. The other side does, primarily on the second and third floors. And the second floor has balconies. Much of this review was written from a huge, shared (with 3 other rooms) balcony at the center of the hotel. All the other room balconies are fenced off to have their own:
And the view is like this:
So you can pick and choose between rooms in the main inn based on your preference for views and balconies. If the weather is nice, the balcony is definitely a nice touch if you’re going to be around the hotel at all.
The rest of the room was pretty much what you’d expect from a decent hotel: enough room to move around in the bathroom; a sink outside the bathroom, which I always find useful when several people need to be getting ready (and large enough for toiletries, unlike the first room); a decent sized flat screen TV; a table for doing some work; and just general cleanliness.
Still no fridge or coffee maker, but we could live without. Coming from our first room, this might have suddenly felt like the nicest hotel room in the world! I was now relaxed and felt that I could honestly enjoy the rest of my stay.
Credit the hotel manager for making me feel heard and taken care of after our initial experience. She even told me that they were closing that first room so they could make sure to address anything needed. Good for them -- if you have to save some cash and get one of those rooms, I’ll bet it won’t be quite what I’ve described. But again, I do think you’ll still deal with bugs and possibly musty smells. If you’ve used the annex and experienced something different, please add your comments below!
The Caverns
As I mentioned earlier, you can buy a combo natural bridge ticket that includes about a 40 minute tour through the nearby caves (about 1 minute away by car). There’s nothing too noteworthy about these caves if you’ve been caving elsewhere, but I thought our tour guide very good, and I find that every cave has its own story. This one included a pretty interesting story especially at the end. So if you like visiting caves, don’t pass this one up.
One bonus tip learned from the cave tour: they have phones down in the caves since cell phones obviously wouldn’t work there, and they need these in case of emergency. They have literally received telemarketer calls down there while on tour. Our guide said she answered one of these and basically said, “Leave me alone -- I’m in a cave.” So there you go ... your newest way of getting rid of unwanted calls.
Lexington, then Back to the Hotel
From the caves we visited nearby Lexington, and let this be fair warning: almost everything is closed on Sundays. We hadn’t thought that out ahead of time. Other than that, I don’t mean to review Lexington here. There’s some history to explore if you like, including the tomb of Stonewall Jackson and probably others. I believe there’s a ghost tour -- but where isn’t there a ghost tour in historic areas these days? :)
The key to this part of the tale is that it was pretty dang hot out and, while the family had some ice cream, I don’t do dairy. So I was in particular need of an iced coffee. The only shop (I could find) in town had closed an hour early that day and I was stuck. Not even a Starbucks within an hour’s drive. I point this out because I was still really hankering for an iced coffee when I got to the hotel -- something I could sit and write with. So much so that I asked the woman in the tavern to just pour a coffee over ice. She said I’d just end up with watery coffee -- which I knew -- yet she was willing to go the extra mile and chill the coffee for me before pouring it over ice. So I ended up with a really nice drink and one more effort that had to be mentioned here as points for the hotel staff.
For myself, I wouldn’t want to spend more than one full day at this hotel because there’s not a lot to do and the food was only mostly good, not great. But to me, the natural bridge was worth experiencing and the hotel, once I figured out where to stay, was plenty nice and the folks on staff were even nicer.
The key to this part of the tale is that it was pretty dang hot out and, while the family had some ice cream, I don’t do dairy. So I was in particular need of an iced coffee. The only shop (I could find) in town had closed an hour early that day and I was stuck. Not even a Starbucks within an hour’s drive. I point this out because I was still really hankering for an iced coffee when I got to the hotel -- something I could sit and write with. So much so that I asked the woman in the tavern to just pour a coffee over ice. She said I’d just end up with watery coffee -- which I knew -- yet she was willing to go the extra mile and chill the coffee for me before pouring it over ice. So I ended up with a really nice drink and one more effort that had to be mentioned here as points for the hotel staff.
For myself, I wouldn’t want to spend more than one full day at this hotel because there’s not a lot to do and the food was only mostly good, not great. But to me, the natural bridge was worth experiencing and the hotel, once I figured out where to stay, was plenty nice and the folks on staff were even nicer.
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