Bye-bye Buffalo

Yesterday was our last day in the Black Hills area and we spent it by going underground.  We visited Wind Cave National Park and toured the cave in the morning.  Visiting caves is always interesting.  I'm a little bit claustrophobic, but I push that aside because I really like the various rock formations and the cool quiet of the cave.  Several years ago we visited Kartchner Cavern in Arizona.  It was very well organized, easy to walk and all on one level, very wet, and it had lots of bats.

Wind Cave is small but complex, relatively dry, and has no bats.  What I mean by small, a strange thing to say about the sixth largest cave, is that it is under about one square mile of land.  But in that square mile, the cave winds back and forth and over and under for many miles.  Our tour guide, Ranger Bree, used the analogy of a bowl of spaghetti.  The spaghetti tubes were like the cave passageways and were all tangled up together.  We went up and down, mostly down, over 300 steps.  We had to stay on the concrete pathways so that we did not damage any of the cave formations.

 Inside Wind Cave - above my head.

 Most of the time we walked single file because the pathway was so narrow.  See who I was following?

Boxwork - this is a rare and delicate formation and Wind Cave has 95% of the boxwork in the world.

The steps and pathways were constructed by the CCC during the Great Depression.  The people who built the steps must have gotten into really good shape because they hauled concrete up and down the cave to build the steps.

After our cave tour we went back to Custer and visited a rock shop and then went back to the cabin for some reading and relaxation.  And we did some packing and cleaning so we could leave the cabin in good shape.

When we left this morning, we again encountered that large herd of large bison on highway 16A.  I took one last picture and said goodbye to the bison.  We drove all the way across South Dakota to Sioux Falls.  We found a nice hotel, CH Clubhouse Hotel and Suites, by accident.  It is a comfortable hotel with a great workout room and large guest rooms.  There seem to be a lot of families here, as though they were living here temporarily.  We found a brewpub for dinner with good beer and good food, and are now settled in for the evening.

Tomorrow we are going to Vermillion SD to see the National Music Museum and then we turn for home.