So Much to See!
The southwest corner of South Dakota is chock full of things to see and do. While Wind Cave (park #34) was the driver for us going to this area, we spent several days seeing the other sights.

Wind Cave

This was our third, and final, cave-based national park. Had you been in the area, you might have heard Christina shouting for joy! While she isn’t technically claustrophobic, her anxiety level definitely goes up when she is hundreds of feet underground. She is, if nothing else, a real trooper.

Wind Cave has over 100 miles of explored passageways which makes it the third longest cave in the US. Based on some complex scientific process involving air volume and movement that neither of us could understand, they estimate there are actually as many as 2400 miles of passages in the cave.

We took a ranger-led tour that covered about a mile, included 300 stairs (which seems to be a metric the National Park Service uses to weed out the faint of heart) and took about 90 minutes to complete. We descended nearly 200 feet below the surface, and the tour was entirely on a concrete trail along dimly lit passages.

Caves, at least for John, are fascinating and beautiful. Inevitably, we find ourselves discussing the brave souls that originally explored and mapped out the caves with their candles and balls of twine (to keep from getting lost). The tour passages in Wind Cave were created by workers in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the great depression. Our guide told us they carried the concrete down in truck tire inner tubes weighing 40 pounds each, and every one of the 300 stairs on our tour required 4 inner tubes to complete. That says nothing about the other three miles of path they had to complete. If that isn’t amazing enough, they did that work for $1 per day!!!

Mount Rushmore

Probably the most famous attraction in South Dakota is Mount Rushmore. This was a bucket list item for both us.

Walking up to the monument, it is hard not to be amazed by what they accomplished. Carving a granite mountain into a work of art at such a scale is an unbelievable accomplishment. It was fascinating to hear the story of how the work was done, and how, exactly, Gutzon Borglum, the lead sculptor, and a team of 400 workers were able to create such massive, life-like sculptures of arguably our four greatest presidents.

One of our favorite stories was how each new worker would be placed in a leather harness and lowered over the edge of the cliff with a jack hammer on his first day on the job. If he lasted two days, he was going to be fine. Many didn’t last past their first descent. They concluded very quickly this wasn’t the job for them!!

Custer State Park

One of the area’s other main attractions is Custer State Park. We didn’t get to spend a ton of time there, but did complete a couple of scenic drives that showed off the park’s beauty and impressive range of wildlife. We probably saw more buffalo there than we did in Yellowstone, and we got to be up close and personal with a herd of feral donkeys (or burros if you prefer). The donkeys are definitely acclimated to humans and are quick to come up to you to see if you have any food to offer. Once they realize you do not, they move on pretty quickly.

Needles Highway

Needles Highway is a national scenic byway providing 14 miles of amazing scenery as it twists and turns through Custer State Park. For us, the highlight of the drive was Sylvan Lake, a 17-acre mountain lake known as the crown jewel of the park. We stopped without having any idea of what we were about to see. We got out of the car thinking we’d take a couple of quick pictures and ended up hiking around the lake for more than an hour. Everywhere you look the views are amazing. It was a misty morning and the leaves were just starting their fall color change. The combination was magical. By the time we were done, we agreed that this is one of the prettiest places we have ever seen!

Moccasin Springs Natural Mineral Spa

Spa Day

Hot Springs, SD is home to, you guessed it, several natural hot springs. On the advice of some new friends we met in Yellowstone, we headed down there to check it out. In short, it was awesome! They built a beautiful spa around the natural springs and blended the two together seamlessly. They have several pools at different temperatures ranging from the upper 80’s to just over 100 degrees. A couple of the pools are large and deep enough that they provide noodles for floating peacefully in the warm water. The float pools, as they call them, are a mixture of natural and more finished which adds to the authentic feel of the place. They also have a wonderful dry sauna.

The day we went was overcast and misting which proved to be the perfect weather for the day. Floating in a warm spring with a light rain falling is delightful. The steam was rolling of the pools and everything had that fresh, clean feel that so often happens after a rain. We rotated between the different pools, followed that up in the dry sauna, and finished up with a delicious breakfast in the on-site restaurant. It was a lovely way to start the day!

The Mammoth Site

Not far from the spa is an active paleontology dig site featuring the largest collection of mammoth fossils/skeletons ever found. At the time of the last ice age, a giant, water-filled sink hole formed that proved to be the perfect mammoth trap with (at latest count) at least 60 mammoths falling in and being unable to escape. We got to tour the dig site and see many of the fossils still sitting exactly where they were found.

Currently around 60 Mammoths have been uncovered.

The Black Hills of South Dakota didn’t disappoint. There were plenty of areas to explore, many that we didn’t even mention as we ran out of time to do everything. Up next the Badlands of South Dakota.

Wind Cave National Park & The Black Hills