Adventures with George and Jane : A rocky day: Watch out for the prairie dogs!!

We awoke in Lovell, Wyoming early with a sense of urgency to get to Rapid City, South Dakota so we would have time to do everything we wanted.

It was a drive with gorgeous views at every turn.

Even George stopped whining and relaxed for most of the ride.

Sometimes he insisted on checking out the views with us up front!

We drove up to an elevation of about 9000 ft as we went through the beautiful Bighorn National Forest.

We even stopped on the side of the road when we spotted some snow, so we could introduce George and Jane to it for the very first time. They didn't really seem to think anything of it.

After we checked in the motel in Rapid City, we wanted to head to Wind Cave National Park, the world's 6th largest cave, in order to make the last tour at 6:00pm. There was only one problem. Our GPS let us know it was an hour and a half away and that we would be arriving after 6pm. We were off to race against the clock once again. (I can neither confirm or deny that any speeding laws were or were not observed).

We were making good time, in a safe manner of course, when the GPS lead us onto a dirt and gravel road. We followed it until we we reached the middle of a prairie field and it let us know that we had arrived. Something didn't seem quite right. The cave was no where in site. We called the Park and told the ranger who answered that we were on a dirt road in the park, and he quickly replied,"I don't mean to be rude, but you went the wrong way. You're in the back of the park." He asked me how many miles I had traveled and told him I wasn't sure but that there was a herd of bison directly to my left if that was any help. It wasn't. Apparently the bison travel quite a bit. He gave me directions and sounded doubtful that we could make the tour on time.

We continued driving down this dirt road in the middle of prairie lands until we saw some small creatures in the middle of the road. Then there were more. They were everywhere. They looked like meerkats but we later found out that they were prairie dogs. They were all over the road, but they all had the sense to move out of the way to let us pass. One of them would be standing up at each colony keeping watch just like the meerkats. It was a rather unique experience to drive right through what seemed like multiple colonies of them, and it turned out to be one of the highlights of our day.

We made it to the ticket booth with two minutes to spare and a cool experience to remember.

This is the natural entrance to the Wind Cave:

Here is our tour guide, Ranger Adam, showing us why it is called the Wind Cave:

We thought the cave was awesome. We descended down the narrow paths and found beautiful formations, large cavernous rooms, and tight, narrow passages. At one point all the lights were cut off (intentionally) and we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces.

The Wind Cave is most well known for it's boxwork formations. It has 95% of the world's boxwork formations and no other cave in the world has the quality and quantity of boxwork as the Wind Cave does. Here are some pictures of this unique formation:

Overall it was a very cool experience that left us with the feeling of wanting to explore more caves.

Next, we drove to Mt. Rushmore to view in person what we had seen in so many pictures and movies.

The sculptures look so much better in person. The scale and features are truly impressive. We took a walk along the presidential trail to get some different views: