Natural Tunnel State Park, Duffield, Virginia
So he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? Soon I will return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go, the prince of Greece will come; but first I will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth. (No one supports me against them except Michael, your prince. And in the first year of Darius the Mede, I took my stand to support and protect him.) ~ Daniel 10:20-11:1 Scripture can be a little confusing to us mere mortals at times and this was one of those times for me as I researched these chapters in Daniel. Daniel seems to use Cyrus and Darius the Mede interchangeably. We know from Isaiah, as well as from Ezra that Cyrus the Persian (aka Cyrus the Great) was the one who released the Jews from Babylonian captivity and sent them back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple in 538BC. But Daniel sometimes speaks of Darius the Mede as if he’s the new king. After much research, I’ve come to the conclusion that this Cyrus and this Darius captured Babylon together and are actually distantly related. Cyrus was younger. Darius was older (62 according to Daniel 5:31). They ruled together until Darius handed the throne over to Cyrus. I don’t know the date for that. And now let’s talk about today’s verses – It becomes obvious here that there are angels – both godly and fallen – who fight over us. Here, we have Gabriel, the messenger to Daniel and others, who is not only a harbinger of Truth, he’s also on call to support Michael, the God-appointed angel prince (defender) of Israel. As such, at this time in history, Michael was to ensure that Cyrus completed the prophecy and released the Jews at the appointed time. And Gabriel was sent to support him because there would be great opposition by the evil one and his minions. Remember, this isn’t just about the Jews at this time, it’s always about laying the groundwork for the coming Messiah!
Our remaining three days at Natural Tunnel, while much the same, held a few different sights. I’m still combining them all into one post though because I’m ten days behind and we’re about to spend five days with friends. There’ll be no time for blogging. 😊
The first day, we hiked to Lover’s Leap, which you read about yesterday.
That’s the 300′ Natural Tunnel wall, the platform and if you look closely, train tracks.
Can you just imagine what this view was like two weeks ago?!?
Then Blaine hiked at his pace (meaning without me holding him back) over to where we observed the tunnel yesterday, while I waited. All for the sake of a picture. He said it would take him 12 minutes to get there, but he made it in 6!
We continued hiking from there, up and down and all around, for several miles until we came to another overlook. Supposedly, you could see the tunnel, train and tracks from here, but there were too many trees – even with their leaves stripped by Fall – to get a good look.
and about the middle of the picture there’s a small cave-like part.
That’s the second man-made tunnel.
We were headed back from the overlook when suddenly, we heard the train whistle! So we raced back to the overlook to see if we could catch a glimpse. Well, we didn’t actually race. It was more like fast walking with intermittent spurts of slow jogging. We’re both too old to jog anymore. However, the Green High School gym wall displayed Blaine’s name as part of the record-breaking relay team for many years!
We saw headlights coming out of the tunnel and something moving along under the trees, but we couldn’t really see the train.
I put in a request to see something larger than a squirrel today, but all I got was Blaine. 😊
The next day, our abused bodies needed a break, so we left the hills of Natural Tunnel for a bit and checked out a nearby asphalted city Park.
On the way back, we stopped to check out what the State Park calls cabins. We’d spotted a couple through the trees the day before. They were a whole lot bigger than what we’d consider a cabin! They were nice though, there aren’t many amenities. You bring all your own linens, paper, etc.
The third day, we hiked around (uphill both ways of course!) to the other side of the tunnel. We were hoping to gain access (illegally, of course) to the tracks to check out the interior of the tunnel a bit. Just a bit. Unfortunately, someone had already thought of miscreants like us and made it impossible without a whole lotta work. Darn!
Still, it was a nice hike, and we found a bench alongside the creek that goes through the tunnel, for our lunch spot today.
Because it wasn’t a very long hike, and the train had been through the tunnel around 2:50pm the past two days, we decided it would be worth the punishment to hike down to the State Park platform again (and back up as there were no Rangers to help me out this time ☹).
I sat on that log to clean out my boot, when it decided to roll and down I went!
Fortunately, I was already practically on the ground. : )
They used to mine saltpeter here.
The pigeons love it here, but there’s no way to look inside. : (
No train today.
There should be many coming in for the weekend though.
It was early enough, we decided to squeeze in one more thing since we move tomorrow, but we had to drive there.
The Interpretive Center has more than just a museum. There’s a reconstructed blockhouse, and a gazebo, which we didn’t know why it was there. Presumably they hold some type of entertainment here, but you really should have a 4WD vehicle to get there.
We really enjoyed our time at Natural Tunnel! Next stop, Morristown, Tennessee!