Badlands, dark caves
“Where can I find nature?”
With a home base of Spearfish, South Dakota, I set out exploring all of the natural wonder of southwest South Dakota. You may think of that area as the home of Mount Rushmore. “Surely,” you are now thinking, “I, on my cross-country, All-America road trip would visit one of the country’s most famous monuments.” I did not.
I had already seen the four over-sized heads of historically significant presidents just five years previous and didn’t want to spend the time to go see them again. I did think about going to see them just so I could retrace the steps of Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage in the seminal movie “National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets.”. However, I didn’t think memes were worth a detour.
Instead, I saw two completely different national parks.
The first was Wind Cave National Park technically located in Hot Springs, South Dakota. The park, as the ranger who gave my group the tour of the cave, was one of the first national parks created in America and the first set aside to protect a cave. The real allure of the park is the cave itself, but there are a few walking trails located above it, one of which I took a short stroll on while waiting for my tour to start.
I chose what is considered the most strenuous of the three standard tours of the cave. We explored both the middle and upper levels along a predetermined concrete path. The aforementioned ranger warned the group about a series of stairs we would have to climb that was equivalent to a seven story building. Having lived in an 11-story building, I considered that a piece of cake. Most of the group didn’t even notice the large climb when it happened; we were all too busy looking at the cave.
Wind Cave, while traditionally formed with water, has very few stalactites and stalagmites. It instead features boxwork, honeycomb-shaped calcite formations. The ranger said Wind Cave is one of the few caves in the world with boxwork. It was quite a sight to behold, appearing like spider webs on the ceilings and walls of the cave. Wind Cave also had lots of crevices and holes, many of which have only once or twice been explored. The best part of the tour, by far, was when we were entered into total darkness. After explaining how early cave explorers, including teenager Alvin McDonald, would traverse the cave by candlelight, the ranger proceeded to turn off all of the artificial lights. At that point, the only remaining light source was from a recently lit candle. Then he blew it out, plunging us into the natural darkness of the cave. While still a cool experience, I would’ve preferred if we had also entered total silence. The noises from others on the tour still gave a sense that I was somewhere and not lost in total darkness.
The following day I again traveled about two hours but this time to Badlands National Park. Badlands is a completely different experience than Wind Cave. While in the cave I couldn’t touch anything (human oils degrade the cave), Badlands is an explorer’s paradise. At the visitor’s center, the ranger told me the park is an open range, meaning visitors can go wherever they please. This was quite a new experience as all of the other parks I had been to required visitors to stay on the designated paths.
Badlands is quite an amazing park, with rock formations galore. The rocks also have highly visible layers designating different geological time periods, and, of course, fossils have been found in the rocks. I hiked a few trails in Badlands, including Door, Window, Notch, and part of Castle. One of the trails, I don’t remember which, required hikers to climb a short ladder. As with all climbing, scampering up was the easy part; going down was a bit more difficult. It was well worth the effort because of the amazing views at the end of the trail. And, as I mentioned earlier, a few times I went off the trail and started exploring the park itself. Ken Burns may have called the national parks “America’s Best Idea;” I would call them America’s Playground.
If you’re wondering about the quote in the subhead, it’s something I overheard a ranger say to a guest as an example of one of the stupidest questions they ever received.
Where to next? On the last day of July, I traveled from Spearfish to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. After that, it was on to Minneapolis, Minnesota the last stop on my trip. I expect two more posts, then one grand conclusion after I get all settled in back in Cleveland.
