Wind Cave National Park Website
Stop number three of the 2018 Road Trip was Wind Cave National Park. We made Rapid City, SD our basecamp for the week because it was pretty central to Wind Cave, Badlands, and Mt. Rushmore. This park is situated in the Black Hills and is home to the most genetically pure bison herds in the world. There are many hiking trails and canyons to explore within the park boundaries.
We planned to do just the cave tour here and spend the rest of the day in Custer State Park. We got to the park in the mid morning and got our cave tour tickets. You cannot reserve the tickets ahead of time, you have to book them in person at the Visitor's Center. There are 3 tours to choose from, between 1 and 1.5 hours long, all are ranger led. There are lots of stairs and the temperature inside the cave is 54° year round.
The tour was fun and informative. The stalactites and stalagmites you might expect to see in a cave are very rare in Wind Cave as it is a dry cave but it has more boxwork than all other known caves combined. There is also cave popcorn, frostwork, and helictite rafts found in the cave. It is one of the oldest caves in the world and has at least 149 miles of cave sitting under 1.25 square miles of land. This cave is also pretty narrow throughout, there are no giant rooms like Carlsbad Caverns. It's a very unique cave and we had a great time exploring it.
Some of the boxwork
This park rates at 4 out of 5 stars based on our standard criteria.
Rating Criteria: Fun, Scenic, Ease of Travel, Wildlife, Crowds
Pit Stop: The remainder of the day we spent at Sylvan Lake in Custer State park. You might know this lake from the National Treasure 2 movie. It's the lake supposedly behind Mt. Rushmore. In reality it's a half hour drive away, or only 5 miles if you could fly over the mountains.
