SouthDakota

WIND CAVE NATIONAL PARK
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Wind Cave NP: South Dakota
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Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota

	Taking Tony’s advice, we set off for Mt. Rushmore.  While looking at the map, we noticed we were going to drive through Wind Cave National Park, which neither of us had planned on going to, or actually, even heard of.  We figured we’d better stop.  Turns out, it would have been a shame to have missed this park.  Wind Cave is sort of a strange place.  As you drive into, it looks a lot like Yellowstone – rolling prairies and bison grazing upon them.  However, once we went into the visitor center, the ranger explained to us, the national park was roughly a 110 mile system of caves located directly under the prairies (it is one of the largest cave systems in the world – something like the 6th or 9th largest one).  The cave might actually be up to 10 times as long, however, as of today, they have mapped only the 110 miles protected by the park system.

	Wind Cave is also somewhat unique in that there are no self-guided tours of the cave.  A ranger tour is always required, as people who have crawled off on their own have gotten lost down there, one for 36 hours, which probably was not fun, as it is pitch black in the cave.  We chose the natural entrance tour, which was guided by a volunteer college student as part of his internship at Wind Cave for the summer.  Tom J, an earth science student at a college in New Hampshire, was an awesome guide – very funny and really knew his information about the evolution of the cave from a geological and historical perspective.  

	After getting some jackets out of the car, since it was 53 degrees in the cave, and after sharing some of our extra wares with a family from Denver who were going to descend into the depths of cave with just towels as jackets, we started the tour at the “natural entrance to the cave.”   Turns out the natural entrance is approximately a 10 inch by six inch hole, and is the only known natural entrance to the cave.  This begs the question, how did anyone get down into the cave to discover it in the first place?  Well, our well-informed guide answered this question in two words – Alvin MacDonald.  

Alvin was apparently an enterprising teenager who just happened upon the cave when he looked down into this hole in the side of a hill and had his hat blown off his head.  When he returned the next day, and leaned over the hole to show someone else this phenomenon, his hat was sucked down into the holde.  What Alvin did not know then, but what scientists have established now, is that winds of up to 70 miles an hour blow in and out of this hole depending on whether pressure systems are higher or lower inside or outside of the cave.  Either way, intrigued by the fact that his hat had been blown off his head away from the hole one day, and then sucked into it the next, Alvin tied some string to a rock outside of the entrance and managed to fit his teenage self through that 10 inch by 6 inch hole, and descend down into darkness.  (FYI - our guide told us that people can generally fit through any hole that is as wide, or wider than the widest bone in their body; for most people this is their hip bone, unless your E-ward, then its their head!).  

Using his string, along with an old “flashlight,” which is essentially a can (the shape of a coffee can) on its side, with only one end open and a candle set in the back near the closed end, Alvin and his “mi amore” explored the cave, documenting his finding in a journal that is on display in the visitors center.  After a while, he started giving people tours (for a small fee), and only once that we know of, forgot people down there after going off to explore a previously undiscovered part of the cave.  In some remote parts of the cave, there are still bits of string he used to find his way back.  Pretty crazy!

As for the cave itself, the rock formations are amazing.  There are no stalagmites or stalactites, but as you can see from our pictures, there was tons of “box work”, “popcorn” and “Van Gogh’s Palate.”  In fact, 95% of the world’s box work is found in Wind Cave National Park, and its rarity and delicacy (i.e., it is as fragile as a potato chip) is one of the reasons the area is protected.  Unlike most other caves, which result from flowing underground water, Wind Cave was the product of thousands of years of erosion from standing water left by an ancient sea.  The leeching water resulted in carbonic acid which ate away the limestone rock, leaving the calcite … the box work formations.  How our trusty guide explained it was by asking us to imagine building a wall with sugar cubes, bound together with concrete, then letting water run over the wall for a long time.  All the sugar cubes would melt, leaving the concrete framework, which is the box work.  Anyway, we are really glad we stopped at this park, since the tour was very informative and the sites were amazing.
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