Adventures above and below ground

    We began our day with a drive through Custer State Park on the Wildlife Loop Road.  It is an 18 mile long scenic drive which winds through prairie and woods.  Custer's buffalo herd as well as a herd of wild burros live in this area.  Soon after we started the drive we came upon some of the 1500 buffalo who live in the park.  Once again they were just wandering along the road.  We saw many bull, cows and calves right up next to the car.  This is the closest I have ever come to these buffalo while driving in the park.
   A bit further along the drive we saw a band of pronghorn antelope browsing about 50 yards off the road.  Again, this is the closest I have seen a whole group of them.  Their white markings really stood out against the green prairie grass.   It looked like one buck and a bunch of  does and fawns.  They were not intimidated by our cars.
   A bit further on we came upon a group of burros on the road.  This herd is descended from burros used to take visitors to the top of Harney Peak.  When the tours were stopped the burros were let loose to roam in the park.  They were very tame and let folks pet them.  Very pretty animals.
    After a picnic lunch at Blue Bell Lodge in the park we drove south to Wind Cave National Park.  Much of the above ground area is rolling prairie and home to additional herds of buffalo and antelope.  It was a beautiful drive to the cave tour building.   We took the 1 1/4 hour Natural Entrance Cave tour with 300 steps (most of them down).  Since it was in the high 80s today, the 53 cave temperature actually felt pretty good to us.

    Wind Cave is the 5th longest cave in the world with 130 miles of explored passages.  There are still many areas to explore so it may move up in the ranking.  It is a dry cave with no internal rivers.  Therefore there are none of the usual cave formations - stalactites and stalagmites.  It was made a national park in 1903 and was the 7th park in the National Park system.  It became a Game Preserve in 1912 when a herd of bison was introduced to the park.   The cave is very three dimensional with many winding tunnels which move through various levels.  It has extensive amounts of beautiful "boxwork" formations.
    Our group of 40 amateur spelunkers descended into the cave and moved down a series of stair cases until we were about 160 feet below the surface.  The cave is well lit and has cement walkways and good handrails on the stair cases.  We were really fascinated by the many places where tunnels went off in all directions from our main walkway.  After winding through many narrow passages we came to a larger cavern and stopped to hear the Ranger give us more information about the cave.  Then the lights blinked out.  Some came back on.  She said that it was not usual for that to happen and went to a phone nearby and called the issue in.  Then the lights all went out.  She turned on her flashlight and asked everyone in the group to turn out whatever light source they happened to have with them.  Many cell phones and a few flashlights came out.  She asked us to decide if we were comfortable moving through the cave with only flashlights or if we wanted to wait for additional rangers to arrive with more lights.  We elected to move forward.  I was amazed at how orderly everyone was in moving through the sometimes very low ceiling, sometimes slippery and angled walkway, steep stairs and tight winding passages.  The group included some kids, teenagers, senior citizens, and me with my cane and knee brace.  We all helped each other as we moved along until we came to an area where the lights worked again.  Very nice to see that people can be calm and helpful  when necessary.
   It was a great tour and we came out of the cool cave to a very dark sky and rain in the air.  I regretted not closing up the camper.  However, as is so often true in the mountains, we drove through sheets of rain but got back to an entirely dry campsite.  Yeah!