Chapter 9: A Mighty Wind
We have worked hard to train our children right. It’s the built-in dream of every parent to have your children grow up to be both more successful and become better people than yourself. In my case, that’s a low bar, but in general, it’s a great goal. If you can produce a child who ends up having a wonderful, high-paying job that he/she is good at, a beautiful family of his/her own, a well-adjusted, selfless attitude and an ability to rebound from failure and be humble in success, you will have won the parenting game and will thus be required to write books and give TED talks on just how in the heck you managed to do that.
However, I would like to report a bit of success. On this morning, June 28, our youngest son took it upon himself to serve everyone breakfast in bed. He tends to wake up early, like most toddlers, and I don’t know if we were slow getting ready that morning or what. But that’s where top-notch parental training comes into play. Little Drew selflessly took it upon himself to make sure every one of us had a delicious Oreo cookie as a nice pre-breakfast appetizer.
We checked out of the Custer Comfort Inn and took the scenic route to the east and then south, through Custer State Park. There was a quicker way to go, but Custer State Park is a much more beautiful drive through the rolling Black Hills. It also is home to one of the largest bison populations in the country, and we encountered some of their number as we reached the border of
Wind Cave National Park.
Along the road, we saw two separate herds of bison including several calves.
We found one guy standing off by himself very close to the road. I pulled over because Julie wanted to get a classic “side profile of American bison with the vast prairie as a backdrop”-type photo. She rolled down her window and carefully composed her image. Then the bison started making a loud growling noise, stamping his feet and rolling his head in the dirt. So Julie snapped a quick shot, and we made like a tree and got out of there.
Wind Cave was most likely first discovered by Native Americans living in the Black Hills, but the first recorded discovery was in 1881 by Tom and Jesse Bingham. On a calm day, they heard the sound of rushing wind and followed it to its source, a small hole in the ground. The force of the gust blew the hat right off Jesse’s head. Eventually, they widened an opening and found their way into the cave. A mining family, the McDonalds, were hired to manage a claim on the cave and couldn’t find anything worth mining. However, they realized its value as a tourist attraction and began extensive efforts to explore, map, and give tours of the cave. A few years later, there was a dispute over the mining claim. In 1899, the Department of the Interior ruled that no party had any legal claim to the land since no suitable mining or homesteading had taken place there. The National Park was formed in 1903. To date, over 123 miles of cave have been mapped…and they’re still going.
We met up once again with our friends along the way and arrived around 9:00 that morning at the visitor center. Like most of the other area attractions, guided tours are first-come, first-served, so you’re better served if you get there early. Thankfully, our National Park pass was accepted here in lieu of the fee for the tour. We took the Natural Entrance Tour, which is the most popular.
We used the same arrangement as at Jewel Cave, where my friend’s wife stayed back with the little ones while the rest of us explored the cave. We killed time in the visitor center by working on Junior Ranger books and checking out a special quilt exhibit they were displaying as part of the 2016 National Park Centennial.
And when I say “we” explored the quilts, I mean Julie and Sarah did. I think I was farting around in the gift shop.
Eventually, our tour time rolled around and we met the park ranger, who led us to the hole in the ground where the cave was first discovered. We got the chance to experience the air rushing out of the cave just as the Binghams did way back when.
This cave had a much different feel than Jewel Cave. Where Jewel Cave consisted mostly of wide cavernous spaces encrusted with calcite crystals, Wind Cave was mostly a cramped, narrow, winding path that we had to navigate single-file. I can’t speak for all of us, but I know for sure that Sarah and I had a lot more fun with this one. We constantly had to lean around corners and duck our heads to make our way through the cave. It felt much more like being in an Indiana Jones movie, minus the tarantulas, bottomless pits and poison darts shooting out of the walls.
Wind Cave is famous for a formation known as boxwork. This is a rare formation in limestone where water filled with minerals seeps down into a lattice-like network of cracks in the rock. It hardens over time. When the rock crumbles away, all that is left is that box-like structure. According to the ranger, this is one of the few caves in the world that features this particular formation.
We tried to grab a photo in one of the few areas on the tour where we could all stand in the same place. I was glad no one had opted for re-fried beans at breakfast.
This room was at the end of the tour. Again, it was one of the very few places where the group could stop and listen to the ranger speak.
Once the tour was over, we went back to the visitor center to collect the kids’ Junior Ranger badges. By the time they’d finished the books, it was lunch time, so we had our gourmet PB&J sandwiches in the visitor center parking lot.
With that, we said goodbye to our friends. They were heading back east, while we were turning to the south. We had more states to explore. More ground to cover. More driving to do. More of the Midwest to discover! WHO’S WITH ME????
Coming Up Next: Pure Distilled American Excellence.
Great picture. The shark coming out of Scotty's chest is the icing on the cake.
Alison!
Okay, that's more like it.
It always goes by way too fast.
