Day 5,

Day 5

Wind Cave National Park. The 7th national park to be created, Wind Cave has over 124 miles of caves (4th longest gave system in the world) all compressed within 1 square mile of land, no more than 500 fee deep. It’s pretty impressive, and they think they’ve only explored 5% of it. On the 3rd of July, they actually found a new room that they didn’t cross to continue exploration because the ground was covered with rare crystal formations.

Something the wind cave is known for are its boxwork formations. They have 95% of the world’s boxwork formations which are actually older than the cave itself. Here’s a picture and some more information on it, like how it’s formed.

Before heading to Mount Rushmore, Kyle decides to pick up another pair of sunglasses.

Buffalo: Both on the way to Wind Cave and leaving it, we saw herds of buffalo, hundreds of prairie dogs, deer, and prong horned antelope. The buffalo liked to cross the street at a very leisurely pace, and in doing so held up traffic a little. This was what we though was the reason for a huge line of cars leaving Wind Cave, however, we eventually found that it was a donkey on the side of the road that, like a homeless person, begged for food from every car. We saw someone feed it half a bag of strawberry Twizlers, yum.

Mount Rushmore: The biggest disappointment on the trip so far short of not seeing a rattlesnake. (Kyle does not share this opinion, he doesn’t want to see a rattlesnake). We expected a few picnic tables, and a large field with trees in front of a majestic cliff with huge faces blasted into the side. What we found was a four story parking garage with an $8 parking fee, 3 gift stores (excluding 2 more that called themselves “bookstores”), a full food court, and a very small, hidden, museum. I suppose it’s a true symbol of America, but I’d rather have Devil’s tower be that image in my mind.

After leaving Mount Rushmore, we headed straight for Devil’s Tower, stopping once to cook and eat all our remaining food (6 hotdogs, 2 hamburgers, 10 eggs, and 3 kiwi’s). It was delicious.

We then made it to Devil’s tower just in time for sunset and climbed some barbed wire and went up this huge hill for a good view. We stayed there for awhile and as it got dark, Kyle said he heard a noise, a growl. I was farther away and said all I could hear was traffic, then started giving him trouble about it. I walked over to where he was to take some pictures and it happened again. It was distinct, short, deep, and loud. We decided it couldn’t be a large cat, and ended up concluding that it could only be one thing: a bear. Well, we ignored it for awhile taking pictures, still hearing it every minute or so, then right as I was taking a picture, and standing on a cliff, the noise came from right behind me (or so it sounded). I jumped, but thankfully not off the cliff. I turned to see a bird fly by, and no bear. We never actually saw the bear, but we don’t think it could have been the bird… could it?

We drove to a campsite, a KOA. They wanted $26 for us to stay. So we left and went toward the nearest town (10 miles away). It’s about 11PM now and I went into all of the motel’s asking for prices. On the last motel, after hearing it was still over $50 a night, I asked where I could park, and explained the situation. No help. We ended up parking in a gas station that looked like it could be a truck stop, but some dickhead called the 5-oh on us and I had to explain the situation. He was very helpful after he realized we weren’t trying to rob the place and after a lot of thinking, he suggested we sleep on the side of the road close to the KOA back by Devil’s Tower. So we did.

I'll have more updates soon!

Eric