26th June - Wind Cave

Boxwork formations. 

After breakfast we headed to the visitor centre to do a tour of the famous caves here (not that I’d ever heard of them!). Will accidentally timed our tour wrong, so we were 40 minutes early! These caves are one of the largest cave networks in the world and it was the first cave system to be declared a national park. We decided to do the Fairgrounds cave tour, which went down to the middle and top levels of the cave and showed the most variety in rock formations. While we were waiting we wandered around the museum section and looked at the elk antlers and various displays about how the forests and caves work. Pretty basic stuff, but it was quite interesting. A little bit of rehashing on bushfires from Yellowstone. We heard an announcement for pie making outside the centre, so we wandered outside, thinking pie sounded like a delicious idea. It was, but not really an edible option. A ranger was showing kids how to make a pie using the different geological layers. Might be a good teaching idea if ever I get thrown into the Science end of things! So we went back to the car for a drink and play some Sudoku and plan our moves for the next day. 

More boxwork formations. 

Then it was time to head to the cave entrance. We walked along a long path from the visitor centre, past some beautiful greenery and then we joined the 40 or so people waiting for the tour. We stashed the drink bottle we had in the camera bag when they said no food or drinks and I was glad I didn’t have any gum ‘cos we weren’t allowed to have that either! Then 10 at a time we went down the elevator, out of the hot sunshine and into the cool depths of the caves! 

The fragile white boxwork. 

The elevator took us down 70 metres and then we followed the lady ranger who was our tour guide. It was 11 degrees down there! As opposed to the 30 degrees outside on the surface! We saw boxwork formations that looked like peanut brittle laced around the roof of the cave – this formation is unique to this cave. There were also popcorn formations, a type of white frostwork formation, which looked like white popcorn stuck to the ceilings of the cave. We walked around the caves and up and down stairs, taking pictures and oohing and aahing at the amazing maze of caves! Then we sat down in a little amphitheatre that looked as if it were facing a wall of the cave. She turned off the lights and then showed us some amazing and very fragile white box formations. They looked all sparkly like diamonds and apparently are quite rare. Then the ranger turned off the lights again and showed us how the original founders of the cave lit up the caves. They were discovered in the 1800s and all the first explorer had was a bucket on its side with a candle in it. The candle lasted for four hours, so if it ran out they were stuffed! He did have a piece of string that led the way back to the entrance, but it would have been pretty rough climbing over some of those sharp rocks in the dark with just a piece of string to follow! Our ranger had a bucket with a candle in it – it didn’t really light up the full extent of the cave we were in! 

Me in the cave. 

We walked up to the next level and again admired all the amazing formations. There was a guy we were following for a while who kept having to duck (well, Will did too), but ol’ shortie here, didn’t have to, except once and it was more a tilt of the head. I think I did bump my head gently one time, oops! There were so many low bits. Anyway, we’d stopped to hear more about the history of the cave and the guy asked if I’d had to duck at all, but I did not understand him at all! Between the mumbling and the accent, I had no idea, but fortunately Will did. I just smiled. I don’t know what accent that was, but it was crazy! There was a family there, with aunts, uncles and cousins and they kept stopping to take pictures. As one of the younger boys said ‘there’s always one family that holds everyone up! And sorry, but that’s us’ or something to that effect. 

More boxwork.

The tour ran for one and a half hours and all of a sudden it was time to take the elevator back up to the surface. We saw the tree on the hill which had fallen over which marked something significant about the cave, but I can’t remember what haha. Will thinks it was where we were underground and the marked the furthest point we went to in the caves. We walked further along the path past the visitor centre and had a look at the original entrance to the cave, which was tiny! It was only about a foot in diameter, so it would have been an effort to squeeze through the gap into the cave. I’m not sure why anyone would do that, but at least that meant the huge cave network was discovered! It was named Wind Cave, because of the wind which whistled out of the cave – the Lakota Indians believe the cave was how spirits were released into the world, like the bison spirits and so on. So they didn’t go near it. The wind was so loud coming out of the cave! In the visitor centre it explained how the wind came to blow there, something to do with the low pressure in the cave trying to match the high pressure outside or something like that. There was a simulation of it in the visitor centre. The wind blows at about 13.3 miles an hour at this entrance. The family from the tour were checking out this entrance when we were there, and one of the women put her head near it and her hair was being blown back so much! It was pretty full on wind! 

Crazy concrete steps. 

Overall we walked 450 steps, but the part of the cave network we explored was only a small part of the whole thing. Apparently 136 miles of cave have been explored which is only about 5% (they think) of the whole network! And if you are over 18 and fit you can go cave exploring and if you find a new part of the cave you can name it anything you like! Our ranger, Whitney wanted to name hers Whitney’s cave, but was told that was boring, so she named it Dragon’s Breath or something like that because it was reddish inside. I personally thought that was a bit boring too, but she seemed happy about it. Now that cave will always be called that. The expeditions last from two hours to two or three days (camping way underground? Crazy! Do you need to take a tent?!) It sounds like it would be fun, so maybe one day! Something different, that’s for sure! 

Pronghorn!

All the paths in the cave were made out of concrete and there were railings along the stairs. The concrete was was carried into the cave in inner tubes on people’s shoulders. They would be so heavy! The majority of the paths were built in the 1930s, so that was a fair effort! Because the original entrance was so small, they had to build another entrance next to the first one, which was bigger. One of the questions while we were in the cave was what would happen if the power went out. They have back-up generators, but Whitney said one time they failed too when they had a huge storm, so they had to climb out! And they ended up in the entrance next to the original entrance. Took them a few hours apparently. Not the best question to ask while we were down in the actual cave. Hope no one was claustrophobic!

The visitor centre was quite old too and was extended in the 1930’s after the original was built in 1918. There were a couple of different entrances into the caves depending on the tour chosen. I think there were three total and the tour groups walked in and then came out up the elevator we went up and down in.

On the way back to the campground we saw some more pronghorn antelope, but this time one was really close to the road, so I got some good pictures of him. Pity he was a bit scruffy. Probably moulting like all the bison we’ve seen. 

Amazing sunset, post epic storm.

As we were eating dinner that night there was a huge thunderstorm. There was amazing forked lightning on the hills around us and really loud thunder. A little bit scary as it was so close! Will was worried about what would happen if we were hit – would we get fried? Or be fine because we weren’t touching the ground? Anyway, I wasn’t too worried as I knew the trees around us were a lot higher than us – I figured they’d get hit first. Well, we didn’t get hit and neither did anything close to us. It was amazing to watch though and it went for about two hours! The rain with it was absolutely torrential and drenched the ground outside. The road was running with water! Then suddenly it all cleared up and there was an incredible sunset. Such bright colours, so I just had to take some pictures! This was our third and final night at Wind Cave National Park.