Wind Cave National Park, Custer State Park, Crazy Horse Memorial, & Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Wednesday July 5, 2006

Today was going to be a busy, BUSY day, so we got up and were out of the hotel before 7:00 am. We were going to need lots of energy for today, so we stopped at the Cowboy Café for breakfast. After gorging we set off for Wind Cave National Park, about 20 minutes down the road. Wind Cave is the 3rd longest cave in the US, but only 2nd longest in the county. (1st largest is Mammoth in KY, 2nd is Jewel Cave National Monument, just a few miles away in the Black Hills National Forest). It was also the first cave to be granted National Park status, before both Mammoth and Carlsbad Caverns. It was discovered by a pair of brothers in the late 1800’s when they noticed that great gusts of wind came out of a small hole. The hole, only about 20 inches in diameter, is the only natural entrance to Wind Cave. After some skinny explorers first went down that hole (which extended 25 feet) they discovered the great cave below. Because of the wind that pushed its way out of the cave, the first explorers called it Wind Cave.

The reason Wind Cave became a National Park is because of its unique formations inside, including boxwork, unique honeycomb-shaped structures that are hardly found in any other caves. Hardly any stalactites and stalagmites are found, like in most caves, as there is very little water that seeps through the cave. We signed up for the first guided cave tour of the day, which was a little over an hour, and started right next to the small natural entrance. They have since created more entrances into the cave, but these are pressure sealed now to maintain the natural air pressure in the cave. Our tour started by going through a revolving door, but most other tours begin and end with an elevator trip in a pressurized chamber. We saw plenty of the boxwork on our tour, and ended up descending over 250 feet before we were done. (Thankfully we took the elevator back up.) Wind Cave offers a lot of other guided tours of the caves, including a 4-hour “wild” cave tour which introduces people to the basics of spelunking, and requires plenty of crawling, dark spaces, and general distress for any agoraphobic. I would have loved to have explored a bit more, but we had things to do, so after the tour we headed out of the park. On the way we saw a huge bison herd. Wind Cave has some of the largest herds of bison in the US, and we ran into a huge one. It also has large areas of prairie dog towns as well.

Before heading out of the park we stopped for a short hike up a hill to the Rankin Ridge Lookout tower. We saw 3 wild turkeys on the way up the hill, and at the top we went up the tower where friendly ranger Duane showed how he finds elk with his high-tech beeper equipment, and also how they use the triangulation method of 2 fixed points to determine the location of fires when smoke is spotted.

From there we went just north of Wind Cave to Custer State Park. Custer is supposed to be great for wildlife viewing, and immediately it didn’t disappoint with a large number of pronghorns running and galavanting around We also saw some of the cutest baby deer with their mother, as well as some bison. Finally we saw some wild burrows which people were stupidly feeding. We yelled at a few, but I’m sure they didn’t care.

After Custer we drove up to the Crazy Horse Memorial, just north of the town of Custer. While it was started in 1949 the memorial looks to only be about 10% done. Amazingly it is being carved and sculpted with 100% private donations with zero government assistance. Right now the face is just about complete, but looking at the models of the final product with what is done now, it’s so hard to imagine how long it will take to finish. I don’t think there is any way it’ll be done in my lifetime, and I find that a bit heartening. It’s like the way so many of the natural wonders we’ve seen on this trip have taken thousands, if not millions of years to create, it’s nice to remember that sometimes, in this do-it-now world mentality, we can’t build Rome in a day. The finished product will have Crazy Horse on his horse, pointing toward the horizon. Once, Crazy Horse was derisively asked by a white man, “Where are your lands now?” He replied, “My lands are where my dead lie buried.” When the Crazy Horse sculpture is one day completed his hand will be pointing to his people’s land, a grim reminder of the price many paid to trying to defend their land and their way of life.

After visiting what will one day be the world’s largest mountain carving we went to one of the largest finished mountain carvings: Mt. Rushmore. I was a little surprised that it wasn’t more of a jam of people there; while it was crowded it’s set up to handle the crowds easily. Unfortunately when we got to the big view of the monument we saw a big rope going down the middle, with people on top. My first thought was that it was Cary Grant battling Martin Landau, but it ended up just being workers lowering a bunch of equipment that were used to set off the fireworks last night. We took a mile hike below the sculpture, and getting closer actually made it a much better view -- you can see the great detail while close up. Overall Mt. Rushmore is really cool to see, but it seems much more impressive when seeing it on TV for some reason. I know that sounds crazy, but to me it just didn’t seem as big (not just literally, but also figuratively) in person.

After Rushmore we headed to Rapid City and then off to Badlands National Park. We’re staying in one of the cabins here and we arrived around 5ish. We ate dinner, then walked around a bit. We also organized the car for the ride home, and I spent a few hours getting these last few days blogs done. So in one day we went to 2 National Parks, 1 National Memorial, 1 Private Memorial, and 1 State Park.

It’s amazing how much there is to do in such a small area, and we didn’t do/see so much of it. Not only taking more time in Wind Cave and Custer, but also Jewel Cave National Monument and the Black Hills National Forest. This is a place that I will love to come back to some day.