This morning we trekked out towards Wind Cave National Park (south of Custer & Rapid City, SD). We woke up at 7am, peaced out at 8, got there at 10 for a private viewing of the cave because we're so high class (and dad's in a wheelchair. But mostly because we're high class). For those of you who have never heard of Wind Cave, I'm not surprised. It's not on most maps. I'm not even sure how we found out about it, to be honest. Actually, I take that back. I think I found out about it via Pinterest.
To get to Wind Cave, I just put into the GPS "Wind Cave National Park" and figured it would take us where we needed to go. Yeah, nope. It was literally routing us to the entrance sign, which was near a 2-track road. Having never been there before, we didn't know what was going on. So we passed the 2-track, thought about it, then backed up the motor home to go down the 2-track because Siri kept telling us to turn. And what Siri tells you to do, you do. Then we actually used our heads and realized the little 2-track was a hiking trail and motorized vehicles were not allowed. Who would've thought.
About 45 minutes and 30 minutes past our original tour time, we finally made it to the visitor center of the park. Kim, our tour guide and underemployed geology graduate (dad asked a lot of weird questions), was not impressed. Our tour was about 20 minutes long, 15 minutes longer than Kim wanted it to last. We went down the natural 6-passenger elevators of the earth and into the lower level of the cave and then the upper level. The cave itself was actually really interesting. Kind of worth the 5 and a half hours we took out of our day to see it.
After our strenuous tour, we went to see the original natural entrance of the cave. It was about 15 inches in diameter. We weren't sure if we were allowed to take pictures inside the actual entrance or not, but we did anyways:
(Mom had a little bit more fun with this than I did. It looks bigger on TV.)
Dad got a chance to explore the cave as well:
After we spelunked for a bit, we decided our time at the cave was over.. But not without touching some butts.
Really. I don't know how we didn't get kicked out of the park.
We didn't really do anything else today besides drive and have a rugged meal of Qdoba. We got dad set up with wifi so he's happy as a clam because it's been a hard couple days without Facebook.
Along with this fierce cat, we also saw some buffalo, elk, prairie dogs, and deer.
We're headed out west towards Mt. Rainier, Washington. Fingers crossed we travel more than 300 miles.
PEACE.
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