Day Twenty One
Mount Rushmore, Jewel Cave, Wind Cave, Badlands
This was our longest day, maybe too long. We had carefully scoped out a planned route through the Black Hills, using the most effecient roads between needed stops. To start things off, we got up early enough and headed out so that we would arrive at our first NPS site right as it opened. We were up at 6am.
Our First stop was Mount Rushmore National Monument. Mount Rushmore is perhaps the most visited site in the Black Hills, and a new visitor center supports them. Being a site that is really not a natural one, or a historical one (outside of the fact that the persons portrayed on it), its really a just a site where you look, and then leave. The new visitor center was a monument in itself, and an example of how visitor centers could be built. It houses shops (kind of like a mall), and a museum to the carvings you see above you. Carved into the granite of the Black Hills of South Dakota are the likenesses of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. These carvings measuring over 60 feet in height, and took only 6 years to carve. The one thing that you should know if you visit here, is that you will have to pay $10 to park. Sure, the ticket you get is good for the vehicle you're driving for one year, but unless you live around the area, you probably won't be back and this is a one time fee. Time wise, unless you milk out all there is to do, you probably won't need more than an hour or so, at most.
Leaving that behind us, we headed to our next stop, Jewel Cave National Monument, a site more representative of the National Park Service. Buried beneath the Black Hills of South Dakota is the fascinating underground world of Jewel Cave. It delights, perplexes, and it always lures you on to further explorations: to see a chamber decorated with glittering calcite crystals; to sample the variety of beautiful, colorful, and strange cave formations for which Jewel Cave is justly famous; or to experience a small part of its vast and intricate maze-like network of passages. Our time is mostly spent at the visitor center, due to tour scedules, and such.
We pressed on and faced further delays as a road we needed to take was closed less than 10 miles from the entrance to our next stop Wind Cave National Park. Our seventh national park, Wind Cave is much more than just a cave. The park protects many species of wildlife, and is one of the few national parks located on the Great Plains. The cave itself that is loacted in the park, and its namesake, is one of a few caves in the world that is actually effected by changing barametric pressure. When the presure drops, wind blows out of the cave, up to 30 miles an hour! (it reverses when the presure increases). What's amazing about the cave is that 83 miles of it have been explored, but recent barometric readings indicate that only about 5% of the cave has been explored! One of the cave's prominent features is boxwork- thin, honeycomb-shaped structures of calcite that protrude from the walls and ceilings. No where else in the world can such a large display be seen. For us, however, we would not be able to see this upclose. The next cave tour was a few hours away, so all we could do was to explore the visitor center and see the historic entrance to the cave and feel the wind blowing from a small oriface.
 It was close to noon at this point and we had already visited three NPS areas! We moved on and covered the ground to our next stop, Badlands National Park, after brief stop at the Grasslands visitor center. The Badlands are a highly underated site on the Plains. Often overlooked by travelers moving onto the Black Hills or points west. The Badlands consist of peaks and valleys of banded colors, vast praries, and awe inspiring vistas. I think this can be best summed up by a quote from Frank Lloyd Wright: "I was totally unprepared for that revelation called the Dakota Bad Lands...What I saw gave me an indescribably sense of mysterious elsewhere-a distantarchtecture, ethereal...,an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth, but created out of it. Its an awesome site on the Great Plains, and ever bit worthy of a visit. So here we were, capured in the height of light in these formations that change with every shift of the sun and clouds. The texture of the landscape is sureal, and really must be seen to be appreciated. No photograph I have ever seen can really capture what it is like. We take the scenic road through the park, stopping several times to take all of this in. We also stopped at the visitor center located on the eastern side of the park.
Time was running short for us, and despite making very good time crossing the endless plains to the south, it seemed like the miles we had to cover were insumountable. We arrived after closing at Agate Fossil Beds in Nebraska too late, and it became clear that we would not be able to reach our goal of getting to Colorado Springs. We quickly re-calculated where we could get, and re-did our itinerary. We knew now that there was no way we could make Colo. Springs by 10pm (our original goal). So, we casually had dinner in Scotts Bluff, and headed again into Wyoming and south into Colorado. Our dinner was an amazing steak dinner for under $5!! A benefit of being in cattle country I suppose. We arrived in Denver after 11pm, and didn't get to bed until after midnight.
|
