We were going underground today at Wind Cave National Park. First we needed to get there. Our drive was both short and long. It was only 29 miles, but it took about an hour to get there. It was a very different drive. The issue was windy roads, and sometimes bison. It was fun to have a drive that kept us on our toes.
We first drove through Custer State Park. The park is a huge bison reserve. When we arrived at Wind Cave National Park, we learned that the two parks abut one another. Our selfie with the Wind Cave sign may look similar to our selfie with the Custer State Park sign. That is because they are opposite sides of the same sign.
Wind Cave is an unusual park. They celebrate both the above ground park and the underground park. On our way to our first above ground hike, we continued to see bison. Sometimes, they were looking at us, too. The Rankin Ridge hike was a great hike. It is a loop trail that goes to a fire tower. You can see the hill we were about to climb.
The climb part of the hike was mostly a rock staircase or a rocky path. It was steep, but not too long.
After we crossed over the pass to the other side of the hill, the views were fantastic. It was easy to understand why the fire tower was built at this location.
On a relatively short hike, we saw an extremely wide selection of flowers.
During our drive to Wind Cave Canyon, we saw more bison. The Wind Cave Canyon hike was an easy hike down a road bed that had become a trail. It was not a deep canyon, but it had numerous interesting rock formations.
There were also more types of flowers to observe and enjoy.
Our afternoon adventure was underground. We took the Wind Cave Natural Entrance Tour. Wind Cave has a couple of unique features. One of the unique features is the boxwork. It is a naturally formed structure in the cave that looks like a cross between a honeycomb and spider webs all made out of cardboard. The intricacies of the structures is incredible.
The second unique feature is the number of passageways. It has about the most intricate set of passageways of any cave in the world. While the cave is not growing that fast, the length and number of discovered and mapped passages is growing quickly. Some of these pictures show larger passages. There are some that require special skills to get through them because of their small size.
The cave tour has short passages. It has narrow passages. It has some short and narrow passages. There are also some very large rooms.
We had to walk above ground to reach the cave tour. On the walk we got to see the natural entrance to the cave. The natural entrance is quite small. Because of pressure differences between the cave and the outside, the air moves in or out at different times. When the pressure difference is high enough, you can actually feel a wind moving in or out of the cave.
On our walk to the cave, we saw even more examples of the bounty of flowers in the area.
After our cave tour, we drove to our hotel in Hot Springs, South Dakota. Along the way we saw more bison.