July 8th: A day's worth of gems

An early morning hike through Jewel Cave was first on our list for today so we were up early to get on the road.  Got everything packed up, headed for the dump station to empty our tanks, and then, Surprise!, as we headed out we were greeted by a hundred bison right across the fence that was 20 feet behind our campsite.  Wow, that was cool.  As you could expect, it attracted a happy crowd of campers.

Jewel Cave is the second longest cave in the world (Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is #1) and is currently listed as 161.25 miles long but with active exploration going on by the NPS, it is growing almost daily.  As a matter of fact they had an exploration team on a four-day trip within the cave while we were there.  When Teddy Roosevelt declared it a national monument in the early 1900s the cave was believed to be 2 miles long and exploration has been taking place ever since.  We were in the 49-degree cave for about two-hours, walked a mile and a half up and down hundreds of steps, and saw mucho coolness.   Lighting wasn’t great but expanses were so the flash was fairly worthless and pics just don’t reflect the beauty.  But it was a great trip.

Lunch at a cowboy bar in Custer, SD gave me a chance to get some pics uploaded to the blog and then on we went to Sylvan Lake, a unit of Custer State Park.  This place is scenic beyond belief, almost like an alpine lake, in fact they were setting up for a wedding on the shore while we were there.  Watched and talked to some rock climbers and learned a little about what they did and how.

Just a couple miles east of Sylvan Lake on the Needles Highway are two tunnels that the map said had dimensions ”barely” adequate for our RV.  I wanted to try them, Sandy was insistent that we didn’t, she didn’t want to have to go to her “happy place”.  So we drove up there to see the Needles.  Just as we reached a little pull off area a crowd had gathered.  In the first tunnel was a tour bus literally crawling through.  Too much fun!  Ultimately we ended up turning around and going back the way we came.  Can’t win them all, I guess.

On to Hill City passing by the Crazy Horse Memorial.  Hill City was touristy but fun and then found a roadside park to walk Eddie and have dinner. 

The evening was spent back at Mount Rushmore for the lighting ceremony.  If you ever have the chance, do it, a must.  Very patriotic, very nice.  The NPS invited all military on stage for the flag lowering and then had each introduce themselves.

Didn’t get back to our campsite until almost eleven, a very full day.