Day 8: Black Hills, South Dakota

We survived our thunderstorm last night and were eager to get up and explore the area. We only gave ourselves one day for a brief tour of the area. The big things we wanted to hit were Wind Cave National Park, Crazy Horse, Needles Highway and Mt. Rushmore. We took the scenic drive through Custer State Park south towards Wind Cave. We loved the Lewis and Clark Caverns in Montana so much we knew that another cave exploration was top on our list. We stopped at the Custer visitor center and saw lots more bison on our way to Wind Cave. We also saw lots of prairie dogs and a few wild burros who inhabit the park. We got to Wind Cave and had time for a snack and browsing the exhibits before the cave tour started. We ended up in a large group for the cave tour because of a crew of cyclists who were there. Still, Lucia did a really good job of keeping up and did most of the walking in the cave by herself. She was however very disappointed that there are no bats in Wind Cave. I was not disappointed. Wind Cave was very different from the cave in Montana. It was much drier, there were no stalactites or stalagmites. Instead there was something called boxwork formations that covered the ceilings and walls of the cave. Wind Cave has 90% of the world's boxwork. The other impressive part of Wind Cave was the 3-D nature of it, everywhere you looked there were offshoot passageways above, to the right and left of you.

After the cave we made our way back towards Crazy Horse where we had lunch and toured the museums there. We took the opportunity of Lucia being asleep in the car to drive the Needles Hwy and do a drive by of Mt. Rushmore before heading back to the campsite for dinner and to get packed up for the drive the next day.

Wild burros

Kiri loves bison

Wind Cave National Park

Junior Ranger Lucia with her bat t-shirt on, just for the caves!

Needles Hwy

Tunnel at Needles Hwy

Our drive-by of Mt. Rushmore