Bridge, Au Natural

Somewhere between Warrenton, VA and Knoxville, TN I began randomly proclaiming "Jesus!!" in a sing-songy faux spiritual voice. Why? Well, somewhere between those two points the world went from not-Jesus-land to Jesus-Land. We're talking crosses, bumper stickers, billboards, etc. Jesus was everywhere!! I think, though I'm not entirely sure about this, that the transition really started when we hit Natural Bridge.

Natural Bridge is a privately owned park that you have to pay admission to get into. It's got a wax museum, a mini-golf course, a haunted house, and a gift shop. Of course, it also has the Natural Bridge, The eighth natural wonder of the modern world or something. It often gets confused with the natural wonders of the world, places like the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef.

Natural Bridge was very cool. It's essentially all that's left after the roof collapsed in a series of limestone caves. The "bridge" itself is quite thick and there's a functional road that goes across the top of it. The sequence of images below takes you through Natural Bridge along the path visible in the first picture. The pictures are thumbnails that link to higher resolution images.

So what initially got me onto the "Jesus!!" kick was, "The Wonder of Creation" light show they do at Natural Bridge every night. I guess they project images onto the rock face or something. That's what all the benches are for in the first image in the series. Places for people to sit while they watch the show.

There was also an "Jesus!!"-related interesting sign describing the Natural Bridge's origin. Sadly, I failed to take a picture of it. As I pointed out to Scottland, the two paragraphs comprising the sign were playing to different crowds. The first paragraph described the bridge's formation using standard geological terminology telling the reader when the rock comprising the bridge was formed, what caused the caves and how long the overall process took. The second paragraph contained coded language about creation, miracles, sculpting, etc. I was surprised that the park simply didn't have two signs, one describing the geological time based version of events and the other telling us which at minute on the third day of creation God stopped by to sculpt the bridge.

Here are pictures of Scottland and I admiring His wonderful sculpture:

After our brief interlude at Natural Bridge, we hopped back into the car and got back on the road to Knoxville.