Day 14—no, I didn’t forget about it!

We had a late night last night plus a super early morning today—combined with a finicky signal across South Dakota equals a belated blog posting about Day 14! This is why (Heather M.!) that I could never keep up with any kind of daily blog! And I’ll go ahead and let you know that day 15 is going to be behind too!! Anyway…. back to the trip report…

We still had the rental van this morning (shout out to Barb at Fort WeLikIt campground/car rental in Custer, SD—she was SUPER nice to work with—and she’s the only gig in town so she probably doesn’t have to be--but totally was!!) so we decided to take advantage of some more of the scenic drives around the Black Hills area in a vehicle smaller than 31 feet long and 8 feet wide! This would prove to be a very wise decision on the Needles Highway where there is one tunnel that is only 8 feet and a few inches wide! Our first stop was the Custer Wildlife Loop Road. Remember how I said we had become sort of ‘unimpressed’ by bison after 3 days of seeing them in Yellowstone?? Yeah, well—strike that, reverse it. Seeing them in Custer was like seeing them for the first time again! We ooohhed and ahhhed over them—especially the cinnamon calves—which are just too stinkin’ cute! Custer also has several prairie dog towns—and while the signs say they are rodents, they are just about the sweetest looking rodents I’ve ever seen! Again, too darn cute!! And if all that cuteness wasn’t enough, there was a huge pack of burros that were super people friendly. Clearly, people have been feeding them because they would walk right up to you practically asking for a handout!

This guy just hung out at Michael’s window for about 5 minutes until he finally gave up and moseyed along. After the wildlife loop, we still had a few hours left on our rental so we opted to drive the aforementioned Needles Highway. This was quite the scenic drive—especially toward the end as we got to the skinny tunnels (some vehicles literally have to pull in their windows to get through—RV’s and busses are prohibited.). Seeing the cool rock formations and tunnels was worth the drive (I think—ask Michael to be sure!).

We also drove by the lake that they show in the movie National Treasure 2—in the movie, they show it as right behind Mt. Rushmore, but in reality, it is several miles away. We didn’t have time to find the exact rocks from the movie, but our car rental friend, Barb, assured us that they were there and she had found them previously.)

After returning the vehicle, we decided to take the RV to see Wind Cave National Park. We arrived just in time for the 4:00 tour (leaving in 15 minutes) to be sold out—so we had to wait until the 5:00 tour. This worked out well because we were able to explore the visitors center, see a movie about the cave and have the girls nearly complete their junior ranger booklets (that makes their 4th of this trip!).

We then cued up for the tour. Our first stop was at the original, natural opening of the cave—where we were able to see the wind blowing (quite steadily) out of the hole—which seemed to be only about 8 inches wide—how people actually got in there, I have NO idea! Wind Cave is actually the 4th largest cave in the world with over 134 miles of cave in a ONE square mile area of land—it has 3 levels and criss-crosses back and forth a LOT! Fortunately, there is now a large, man-made opening so there was no dropping down into holes for us!

(the natural opening)

Wind Cave does not have the typical cave formations (stalagmites, etc. ) but they are famous for their box work formations. Hopefully you can get the basic gist from these pictures—my cave photography skills are less than stellar! I won’t lie—spending 1 1/2 hours 400 feet underground was a tad creepy! Especially when, during the midway point of the walk, the park ranger/tour guide turned out ALL of the light in the cave. OH MY WORD, it was DARK!!! All of us were a little freaked out after that--- some more so than others!

All in all, though, it was a neat experience and I’m glad we did it together! We made it back to camp in time for an evening shower and a late dinner. Overnight saw some very severe storms roll through the park… some of us woke up (the two who typically do… myself & Abbie!) and some of us slept right through. We needed as much sleep as possible since Thursday would bring an EARLY start to the day.