Add Us As A Trusted Google Source Lexington, Virginia is famous for its Civil War history, its prestigious military college, and its charming downtown. Most guidebooks will tell you about art galleries, where to eat, and opportunities for live music. This guide contains the places that make your travel companions do a double-take, the spots that generate the photos your friends can’t scroll past without stopping to ask, “Wait — where even is that?”
Key Takeaways:
- The VMI Museum houses the actual stuffed hide of Stonewall Jackson’s beloved warhorse, Little Sorrel, just yards from where his bones are buried.
- Dinosaur Kingdom II is a walking adventure park where Confederate soldiers battle dinosaurs and Abe Lincoln lassos a pteranodon.
- A secret J.R.R. Tolkien quote is carved into a rock along the Cedar Creek Trail at Natural Bridge State Park and nobody knows who put it there.
- Washington and Lee University is home to a stunning, fully functional Japanese Tea Room right in the middle of its Virginia campus.
- Hull’s Drive-In Theatre is a beloved, community-owned nonprofit that has been showing movies under the stars since 1950.
- Virginia Safari Park lets you hand-feed giraffes, bison, and elk from your car window on a three-mile drive through the Shenandoah Valley.
- A giant cyborg Muffler Man named the Paulverizer stands atop a junked truck in Buena Vista, piloted by an alien inside its chest.
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1. Hide of Little Sorrel, VMI Museum
Stonewall Jackson’s beloved warhorse was by all accounts an unremarkable-looking animal, but Jackson prized him for his endurance and intelligence. Little Sorrel outlived his famous owner by more than two decades, eventually retiring to the campus of the Virginia Military Institute, where he grazed peacefully until his death in 1886 at the extraordinary age of 36. His body was sent to a taxidermist who worked partly for cash and partly in exchange for a portion of the horse’s bones, which eventually ended up in a Pittsburgh museum, and lastly made their way back to Virginia. The stuffed hide was mounted and placed on display at the VMI Museum, where it still stands today just yards from the buried ashes of those very bones.
2. Dinosaur Kingdom II, Natural Bridge
Dinosaur Kingdom II is gloriously and shamelessly unhinged. This outdoor walking attraction, built by folk artist Mark Cline, imagines an alternate Civil War history in which the Union Army discovers a hidden valley full of living dinosaurs and attempts to weaponize them against the Confederacy. Wander through the woods and you’ll encounter Stonewall Jackson locked in battle with a spinosaurus, Abraham Lincoln lassoing a pteranodon while it chews up the Gettysburg Address, and a stegosaurus being milked like a dairy cow. It is the kind of place that could only exist in the U.S., and you will leave with photographs that require a great deal of explanation.
3. Hidden J.R.R. Tolkien Quote, Natural Bridge State Park
Natural Bridge State Park is already a jaw-dropping destination. If you head down the Cedar Creek Trail and keep your eyes open, you’ll find something surprising: a passage from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring carved directly into the face of a large rock. The lines come from a walking song sung by Frodo, Sam, and Pippin as they leave the Shire. The most enchanting detail of all is that park officials have no idea who carved it or when. It appears on no maps and in no brochures. You either stumble upon it or you don’t, which feels exactly the way Tolkien would have wanted it.
4. Washington and Lee Japanese Tea Room
The Senshin’an Tea Room at Washington and Lee University was named by Sen Genshitsu, the 15th-generation Grand Master of the Urasenke Tradition of Tea, and it serves as a fully functioning classroom for the study of Chanoyu, the Way of Tea. The room incorporates both formal shoin-style temple design and the humble sukiya cottage aesthetic. Visitors should know that this is a fragile and sacred space; heavy jewelry and shoes are left at the door, white socks are traditional, and everything is handled with the kind of reverence the room deserves. Contact Professor Janet Ikeda to schedule a tea ceremony demonstration.
5. Hull’s Drive-In Theatre
Hull’s Drive-In has been entertaining families since 1950, but its survival story is what makes it truly special. When the theater faced permanent closure in the late 1990s, a group of devoted fans formed a nonprofit organization called Hull’s Angels, raised tens of thousands of dollars through popcorn sales and membership dues, and eventually purchased the drive-in themselves. Today it operates as one of the only nonprofit drive-in theaters in the country, showing double features under the stars and occasionally hosting pre-movie concerts. It is the rare roadside attraction that comes with a genuine community love story attached.
6. Virginia Safari Park
Virginia’s only drive-thru safari sits on 180 acres in Natural Bridge, and it is exactly as wonderful as it sounds. More than 1,200 animals (bison, elk, ostriches, wildebeest, emus, and rare Père David’s deer) roam freely across three miles of maintained gravel road. You’ll roll down your window, extend a bucket of feed, and suddenly find yourself face to face with a very large animal who has opinions about breakfast. Beyond the drive-thru, you can feed giraffes on foot, wander through a budgie aviary, and interact with penguins and sloths.
7. The Paulverizer, Buena Vista
The Paulverizer is another of Mark Cline’s creations. It is massive cyborg Muffler Man standing atop a junked truck outside a recycling plant on Sycamore Avenue in Buena Vista. The figure has two human arms and a human head, but its torso is entirely mechanical. Inside its chest sits a control pod occupied by an insectivore alien operating the whole contraption with levers, inspired by a scene from Men in Black. The whole thing was unveiled in October 2013 as a monument to the plant’s owner, Paul Palma, which means somewhere out there is a man who has a giant alien-piloted robot named after him.
