The Black Hills region is home to more than just a few prairie dogs and the famous Wall Drug store. On the western side of Rapid City I visited two American classics: Mount Rushmore and Wind Cave National Park. Other than being the most photographed thing in the area, Mt. Rushmore lies above a massive amphitheater and mall area. George Washington’s nose is about 20 feet long and the parking garage to get into this national monument has 6 entrances. Fun fact that I learned while in line at Mt. Rushmore: Thomas Jefferson was apparently the creator of the first ice cream recipe…which they just so happened to be serving at the monument entrance.
The morning was a mad rush getting to Mt. Rushmore (no pun intended). Soon after, I raced south to Wind Cave National park for their 1:00 p.m. tour. I had gotten pretty lucky and registered as #10 on a list of ten people to participate in their famous Wild Cave tour. This tour has visitors spelunk down 275 feet below the earth’s surface in caves that have clearances as small as 11 x 36 inches. Armed with headlamps, helmets, kneepads we descended into the 52 degree wind cave looking at beautiful boxwork formations and frostwork from all corners of the cave. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take any pictures, but I can show you a map of what the wind caves look like. Apparently over 147 miles of cave have been found in 1 square mile of the park.
For 4 hours we crawled, slid, maneuvered, and jiggled past the cave walls. One part of the cave took us to a room where we saw the signatures of the first cave explorer, Alvin McDonald, on the wall signed using the smoke of their candles from 1893. The room opened up to an atrium with a bottomless pit. One wrong step and you would have been gone. There were 5 explorers who had found that pit and saw that it connected to another pit…they named it after the first two letters of everyone’s name: BePaDoBeDe.
I had mentioned to one of the park rangers that I really wanted to see the bison. Wind Cave is special because it is one of four locations in the United States to have a free roaming bison herd. The bison had almost gone extinct in 1890, with the last herd living in Yellowstone. In 1913 the American Bison society helped reintroduce the bison into the Wind Cave National Game Preserve. They are especially important to the Lakota people who pray for the bison, who provided them with food, shelter, and necessary equipment. Legend says that the bison emerged from the cave entrance of the Wind Cave and at the time the cave entrance was huge. Once all the bison had escaped into the world, the cave entrance shrunk back down. As a result the bison were forced to stay. To this day several native American tribes refuse to enter the Wind Cave National park or take part in the spelunking/caving activities as they treat the place as a sacred temple.
Since then the number of bison has steadily recovered…so I was interested in seeing them. At the southernmost part of Wind Cave National Park is a giant prairie, here two to six hundred bison come to roam and eat. One guy even played around in the dirt a few hundred yards from my car!