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| This early entrance to the Wind Cave is too small for most adults to enter. |
Mining companies ignored the cave system because there were no important minerals found inside. However, an early explorer named Alvin McDonald recognized its tourist value and offered to guide visitors through the sprawling cave system. Eventually, in 1903 the US government stepped in and declared the Wind Cave America's seventh National Park.
There are many types of tours offered for the Wind Cave. Instead of a general tour, we wanted to try a candlelight tour. In the 19th century, cave exploration was performed with primitive light sources--a bucket with a candle inside. If the flame were to go out, then the explorer would be engulfed in absolute darkness.
Our "candlelight" tour would instead be a bucket modified to hold a weak light bulb inside. The tour was limited to only about a dozen people to create a more intimate feeling of exploration. Unfortunately, photography would not be allowed on the tour.
Our ranger filled us in on the recent history of the cave with interesting anecdotes about some of its early explorers. She explained that the defining geological characteristics within the Wind Cave are the boxwork formations. These calcite formations create a honeycomb appearance on the walls and ceilings of a cave. While other caves may have an occasional boxwork formation, none of them have nearly the abundance of them that the Wind Cave system has.
Our two-hour tour took us off the designated walkways of the regular tours. We had to scramble over rocks, duck under low ceilings, and glide through narrow openings. We also did a moment of silence where we also turned off our lamps. It gives a person perspective on what survival adaptations cave-dwelling organisms have made to survive in pitch darkness. Overall, it was an enjoyable tour. Two other people in our tour group liked it so much that they signed up for the wild cave tour later that day. That one is a longer and much more strenuous spelunking adventure available for adults and older teenagers.
After our foray into Wind Cave, we drove back to Custer and stopped at the Purple Pie Place for a late lunch. We were parched, so the large iced teas and sodas that we ordered sure hit the spot. The lunch fare was good, but we really came for the pie. Those didn't disappoint.
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| Chicken pot pie |
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| Prime rib dip |
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| Peach, raspberry-rhubarb, and bumbleberry pies |
South Dakota is also a geological and paleontology playground. So many types of minerals and prehistoric fossils can be found there, especially around the Black Hills region. Therefore, many stores in this area offer up a plethora of minerals and fossils for sale. We stopped off at a popular one in Custer called Ken's Minerals. The quantity and diversity of minerals (most of which I cannot spell nor pronounce) were overwhelming. They weren't just selling the original minerals, but they also had them altered to make functional items for the home. They had everything from decorative pieces, book ends, wind chimes, etc. We ended up purchasing several items from the store since the prices were very reasonable compared to what can be found in the rest of the country. The Wife was happy with her very elegant vase set into a piece of petrified wood. In contrast, I settled for some coprolite--fossilized animal poop.
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| A petrified saber-toothed tiger skeleton. |
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| A fossilized skull of a giant pig |
One odd piece that was tucked away in the corner of the shop looked merely like a giant, ugly rock. Apparently it is one of the largest cycads ever found. Cycads are a type of seed plant that existed in greater diversity in prehistoric times. Surviving species now can be found mainly in tropical environments.
Cycads are a reminder of the National Park Service's early failures. Cycads were abundant in the Black Hills area when dinosaurs roamed the land; hence, many fossils could be found there in modern times. Amateur collectors and local ranchers and farmers would often take these fossils, so there was a push to protect the area in the early 1900's. At the forefront of this preservation was a Yale paleobotanist named George Reber Wieland. He purchased much of the cycad-rich land with the use of the Homestead Act. He promised to turn the territory over to the federal government provided that they build an exhibition to display his prehistoric artifacts. As a result, President Warren Harding established the Fossil Cycad National Monument in 1922.
Unfortunately, the NPS allocated little funding for the park, so it never had a visitor's center nor superintendent (the administration of the nearby Wind Cave was supposed to watch over it). Soon tourists were also visiting the area, and they too were pilfering the easy-to-find fossils. Consequently, Professor Wieland sent in the Civilian Conservation Corps to excavate as many of the fossils as possible. After becoming disgruntled that there was no funding to build his planned exhibition hall, Wieland shipped over 1,000 of these fossils to Yale University instead of turning them over to the federal government. By 1957, the NPS realized that there were essentially no more cycad fossils in their protected land. The Fossil Cycad National Monument was abolished and the land was transferred to the Bureau of Land Management. To this day, Yale University has the largest cycad fossil collection.
Since we had nixed our plans to revisit Mount Rushmore, we just spent the rest of the afternoon back at the Bavarian Inn. The weather in the Black Hills was absolutely perfect, so we just sat out on the hotel balcony while doing our laundry on the floor below.
For dinner that night, we were able to get reservations at Skogen Kitchen. This small restaurant was great. The food is more cosmopolitan and refined compared to the safe Midwestern fare offered by many of the other restaurants in the area. It was the best meal we would have on this trip (granted most of our dinners came courtesy of an Instant Pot).
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| Deviled eggs with rice seasoning and sriracha |
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| Piquillo peppers with goat cheese, pine nuts, raisins, and honey |
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| Braised short ribs with cous cous and green chermoula |
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| Suckling pigs with watermelon and toasted buckwheat |
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| Homemade raviolis with wild mushroom and truffle foam |
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| Walleye with roasted broccolini and szechwan peppercorns |
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| Panna cotta with rhubarb and balsamic vinegar |
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| Salted caramel pudding and toffee crumbles |
*****
Thursday, August 2, 2018
*****
We had plans to visit another cave system this morning. Jewel Cave was discovered in 1900 and proclaimed a national monument in 1908. It is the third largest cave system in the world with about 200 miles of tunnels mapped so far. Some believe that the Jewel and Wind Caves may connect which would make them the largest cave system in the world.
We checked out of the Bavarian Inn and drove the short distance to Jewel Cave. Although candlelight and wild caving tours are available, we chose the standard scenic tour. Unlike the more cramped Wind Cave, the passages in the Jewel Cave are more spacious. Additionally, there were many more stairs that need to be climbed.
Some of the walls of the cave look as if they belong on the set of an Aliens movie.
Some of the common features of the cave include calcite and spar formations.
In contrast to the ranger that we had the day before, our lady today was several decades older. She was much more disorganized and flustered, especially since our tour was started behind schedule. This ranger didn't regale us with any interesting stories during the tour. It probably would not have mattered because, with the larger group, we couldn't hear much of what she was saying unless we were right next to her. After an hour into our tour, we were eager for the experience to be finished.
After our cave tour finally ended (it took almost two hours), we drove eastward as we would be leaving the Black Hills. Once again, the journey was slow as there seemed to be even more slow motorcyclists on the single-lane roads.
We did stop briefly to see the controversial, privately-funded Crazy Horse Monument. Although demolition had begun in 1948, the only thing completed seems to be the face. After 70 years of plodding progress, there is so much more work left to go.
We did stop briefly to see the controversial, privately-funded Crazy Horse Monument. Although demolition had begun in 1948, the only thing completed seems to be the face. After 70 years of plodding progress, there is so much more work left to go.
We drove east until we passed the town of Wall, South Dakota. One of the places that I had wanted to visit was the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site (MMNHS) which was established only a decade ago. Like many people who were raised during the Cold War, nuclear war was always a concern in the back of my mind. During the height of these hostilities, the U.S. Strategic Air Command had erected silos in sparsely-populated Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas to house 1,000 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles. For thirty years, Air Force crew-members manned these sites 24/7 while awaiting the word to start the end of the human race. Half a world away, their Soviet counterparts did the same.
Once the Cold War was winding down, many of these missile silos were dismantled. One silo code-named Delta-09 was left intact for historic purposes. It's an unmanned site, but there is an audio guide and occasionally park rangers will visit the area in case visitors have any questions. A missile still sits in the silo but the warhead and propulsion have been removed.
Twelve miles away is the Delta-01 launch control facility. In that bunker 31 feet below the ground, members of the 44th Missile Wing controlled 10 silos including the aforementioned Delta-09. Guided tours are given by park rangers but reservations are required and space is very limited. Unfortunately, we tried to get tickets two weeks in advance, but they were already all sold out.
Instead, we drove another 15 miles east until we reached the MMNHS Visitor Center. Like almost all NPS visitor centers, there is a movie that gives guests an overview and history of the site. I thought that this film was the best one that we had seen among all the parks that we had visited in the past two years. It was amazing to hear how many times the world was at the brink of nuclear destruction. There were incidents such as in 1979 when a training simulator was accidentally downloaded into the NORAD computers. Monitors displayed an all-out Soviet missile launch. Luckily, the mistake was found before the U.S. retaliated against this phantom menace.
The most poignant story that was mentioned as in regards to Stanislav Petrov, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces. In 1983, a Soviet jet shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007 killing all 269 people aboard after it had inadvertently strayed into Soviet Air Space. The western world was outraged and tensions were extremely high between the U.S and USSR. Only three weeks later, Petrov who was in command of the early warning system monitoring American missile launches received a notification that six nuclear missiles were launched from the U.S. towards the Soviet Union. He had 25 minutes before the missiles would touch down to make the decision whether to alert his superiors. Having no other way to verify the data from the early warning system, Petrov chose to disobey orders and refused to make the phone call. Even after the system reported four more missile launches, he continued to dismiss them as false alarms.
Fortunately for the world, Petrov was right. Atmospheric conditions had caused malfunctions in the Russian early warning system. Although he didn't have the authority to launch any Russian nuclear missiles, most historians believe that if the warnings had been relayed, then the paranoid Soviet leadership would have retaliated. They were so distrustful of the American government that they were expecting an attack. Petrov's reward for being right and "saving the world" was an official reprimand, a demotion to a less sensitive post, and an early retirement from the military. Only after the Cold War ended did the rest of the world hear of his exploit and shower him with honors and praise. Petrov died in obscurity in 2017.
The center also had a decent museum with information about U.S. and USSR nuclear arsenals and artifacts from the Cold War. My favorite is the vault door from one of the control centers that only somebody who lived in the 1980's would have understood.
Afterwards, we drove across the highway to the nearby entrance to the Badlands National Park (BNP). Although we had already visiting the North Dakota badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the terrain in the BNP was much harsher. The land was rockier, with more patches of loose dirt rather than luscious green grass. Unlike the cool weather of the Black Hills, the climate was unbearably hot with direct sunlight from the lack of shade-providing trees. In contrast, the winters in this area can be intense with snow and ice. It's amazing that any creatures can thrive in this environment.
The colors of the rocks in the BNP are prettier than those of North Dakota. However, it was so hot that (over 100°F) we really didn't want to leave the comfort of our car. We drove along highway 240 which runs along the majority of the park, stopping to take some scenic photographs. We did walk the short Fossil Exhibit Trail but it was pretty lame. Yes, major paleontology discoveries have been made in the Badlands, but the reproduction fossils on display were not very interesting.
Not surprisingly, we saw little in terms of wildlife. So far on the trip we have had the fortune to see many large mammals including bison, elk, moose, pronghorns, coyotes, and even a bear. However, we still hadn't seen any bighorn sheep. As we turned north to exit the park through the Badlands Pinnacle exit, we came across a herd of these animals. Unfortunately, they all looked pretty juvenile, the oldest with small unimpressive horns. Some even had collars on them. Possibly they were part of the bighorn sheep re-population program. Over the last several decades, bighorn sheep from the Rocky Mountains have been relocated to the Badlands to improve their dwindling numbers. While this herd checked the bighorn sheep box, we still wanted to find one with large iconic horns.
Once we left the park, we checked in to our hotel at the Frontier Cabins Motel. There are not a whole lot of lodging (or dining) options near the Badlands. The Frontier Cabins are conveniently located on the outskirts of the town of Wall leading towards the park. While the motel resembles rustic cabins, it still has modern amenities such as air conditioning and showers. There is no television (not that we cared), but they do have WiFi which is much more important. Oddly enough, the front office is basically a store that sells random Western junk and an arsenal of fireworks large enough for a Times Square New Year's Eve extravaganza.
After getting situated, we headed into town to visit the legendary Wall Drug Store. Established in 1931, the pharmacy's popularity really took off after they started offering free ice water to thirsty travelers who were visiting Mount Rushmore. Subsequent promotions include free donuts for Air Force personnel working on the Minuteman Missiles and a cup of coffee for only 5 cents (that offer still exists today). Nowadays, the store is famous for its self promotions. Signs radiating out for miles in every direction can be found advertising Wall Drug. They give out free bumper stickers with their store name for folks to help promote their brand. Since World War II, there has even been a tradition of photographing signs for Wall Drugs in exotic locations such as the London Underground, the Taj Mahal, Great Wall, Antarctica, and even hundreds of feet deep in the ocean on a naval submarine.
Wall Drug is not just a pharmacy. It's like a Western version of Walmart, albeit with higher prices than their competitors. Visitors can buy goods ranging from souvenirs, clothing, jewelry, cowboy apparel, jackalopes (stuffed jackrabbits with antlers glued to their heads), and paintings.
Since the town of Wall had very little dining options, we decided to eat at the Wall Drug cafe. There were no shortages of seats. Diners seat themselves, order from the counter, and bus their own trays. Most items on the menu were less than $10.
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| The awful, watered-down coffee was a nickel too pricey. |
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| Hot beef sandwich |
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| BBQ ground beef sandwich |
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| Fish and chips basket |
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| Buffalo burger |
Saying that the food was awful is an understatement. It's cafeteria-style food but on par with an elementary school that just suffered through a series of budget cuts. The pies were a bit better, but nothing I would write home about. The donuts, which we bought to snack on the following day on our drive home, were very dense. Normally, I like cake donuts, but I wasn't very impressed. Perhaps it's meant to be dunked in their 5 cent coffee-flavored water.
Overall, Wall Drugs is a tourist-trap of epic proportions. It's interesting to stop and see once just to say you've been there, but it's not a place that you would want to visit again.
We were less than an hour away from sunset when we left Wall Drugs. I was still determined to spot some bighorn sheep with actual big horns. So I decided to drive us back to BNP and try the Sagecreek Rim Road on the western side of the park. It's not paved so there are less cars and presumably more wildlife. We drove slowly for a few miles down the gravel road while the sun slinked below the horizon. After a few minutes, we saw what we were looking for--two adult bighorn sheep. The animals eyed us suspiciously as we pulled over to watch them. They munched on some vegetation for a few minutes before disappearing over the rim of the canyon.
Having found the animal that we were looking for, we called it a night and headed back to the Frontier Cabins to get a good nights sleep for the upcoming day.
*****
Friday, August 3, 2018
*****
We awoke that morning knowing that we would have a huge task in front of us. We were going to try and drive all the way home, a distance of 1,200 miles. We filled up our coffee mugs, gassed up the car, got The Kids settled in with their iPad's and hit the road.
We still planned on making some stops along the way. So after three hours of driving, we found ourselves in front of the Corn Palace on the other side of the state. Once upon a time, corn palaces were not uncommon buildings created by municipalities, usually in Iowa or South Dakota, to draw visitors to their towns. Over time, they all became extinct except for the last remaining one in the town of Mitchell, South Dakota. Dating back to its initial creation in 1892, the Corn Palace has served as an exhibition hall, venue for concerts, and high school basketball arena.
There are several murals decorating both the interior and exterior of the building. They are typically changed on an annual basis. On the day we visited, the arena was arranged with several kiosks selling fun corn-themed souvenirs and clothing. We stopped by the concession stand to purchase some snacks. Not surprisingly, it was popcorn and corn on the cob.
We drove through Iowa and Nebraska, stopping off in Sioux City and Omaha to buy Starbucks mugs for The Wife's ridiculous collection. The Wife also insisted on trying Culver's, a Midwestern fast food chain that specializes in burgers, frozen custards, and Wisconsin cheese curds. The food was good for fast-food but, in the end, it was still fast food.
We found ourselves passing through Kansas City around dinner time. We made a slight detour for some take-out at Arthur Bryant's Barbecue Restaurant. We lost about 30 minutes of daylight merely standing in line waiting to order. But it was worth it merely for their signature "burnt ends" beef brisket. They also don't stiff you on the amount of food they give you. Arthur Bryant's also supported the notion that the "hoodier" the neighborhood, the better the 'cue. We were pleasantly surprised that we didn't get carjacked stopping for gas a block away from the restaurant.
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| Burnt ends |
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| Pulled pork |
Eight hours later, we pulled into our driveway at home at 4 in the morning. It was an exhausting day of driving, but we were glad to finally be home. As expected, we really enjoyed our time at Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone. The Black Hills was beautiful this time of year, but visiting one cave would have been enough. Perhaps we were fatigued from the two weeks of travelling, but none of us were really very enthusiastic about Theodore Roosevelt or Badlands National Parks. Regardless, they too are a quintessential part of America, and we had the privilege and responsibility to see and enjoy them.
