Virginia Tech, Dirty Dancing and a hike to Cascade Falls

By Alana Hamann

After a shorter drive than expected, we arrived at VirginiaTech and got a tour of the beef cattle barn and the horse barn plus a look at one of their riding lessons.  We drove into campus and met with a faculty member of the school's agriculture college who showed us around the greenhouses on the campus.  He talked to us about a couple specific plants, such as one which flowers for a few days every four or five years.  He told us that any major could take classes on indoor plants and that a lot of people did take advantage of this.  We even got to take clippings from some of the plants, which we called our ‘babies’.  It was interesting to see the large presence that horticulture and agriculture have on their campus relative to Maryland’s.

Jeannie Dudding and Elizabeth Johnson of the 4-H extension office then took us to the Mountain Lake Lodge, which was where Dirty Dancing was filmed.  They told us that an earthquake had made the lake drain into an underground cave and that there were issues with fixing the resulting crack while still maintaining the natural lake designation.  However, they found a way to fix it while keeping it a natural lake, and it is slowly refilling again.  They mentioned how there were diary entries from around the 1920s saying how the lake had drained, so they figured that this is a natural process for the lake.  We got to go into the resort and looked at pictures of it throughout the years.  I had watched the movie before, but I was surprised to learn that it was filmed in Virginia.

We all headed out to a trail, which led to Cascade Falls.  We decided to take the harder trail with stone steps to get to the waterfall and come back to the parking lot by way of the easier trail.  The scenery was beautiful as we headed up the path, although there were a couple slippery spots on the trail, but we made it after a couple miles.  We finally arrived at the waterfall, which was stunning, and took a ton of pictures.  You could feel the mist from the waterfall when the wind blew.  We walked back and were all exhausted after our hike, which was around 4 miles.