South Dakota- Day 14

Today we headed to Wind Cave National Park… we had to get a cave in for Noah. We took a scenic drive through Custer State Park on a highway called Needles Highway. It was very long, windy, narrow and had several tunnels that were quite narrow. The scenery was beautiful as we meandered through the Black Hills and forest areas. We saw a large heard of bison that clogged up the traffic for a while. We also saw prairie dogs, deer and pronghorn. When you get to Wind Cave it changes to prairies with tons of grasses and wildflowers. We finally made it there after 1 ½ hours and scheduled our cave tour. We did the Natural Entrance tour that had 300 steps and was about 1 mile long. The cave is the 4^th longest in the world at over 134 miles of caves. So, in we go to the cave with our Ranger Wendell who was quite the character, he is a school teacher so he talked nonstop, giving us lots of information. This cave was not fun to me. Within 5 minutes of entering, a few people decided it was not for them and asked to leave. Megan and I were close to doing that too. Especially as you stand in a cave, in a line with 20 other people, in a narrow, dark cave tunnel. But we made it through, Megan did cry a lot and I wanted to as well but we made a pinkie promise half way through that the 2 of us would never step foot in a cave again. I just have a fear that the cave is going to "cave" in. Most of this cave was just very narrow and we had to duck a lot just to get through. At one point he turned off the lights and we got to experience total darkness; that was neat. Then we were done and spent time exploring the exhibits so the kids could do their Jr. Ranger program. They were sworn in by Wendell and then off we went back to camp, which was only 30 minutes not taking the scenic route.

The best part of this leg of the trip and possibly the entire trip was the lighting ceremony we did at Mt. Rushmore tonight. At 8:30pm the Ranger did a stump the ranger program where anyone could ask him questions about presidents. He knew all of the answers and more! It was so much fun, we laughed so hard, and he was quite the comedian. The setting was great, the amphitheater is in front of the monument and it is huge. We started with the pledge of allegiance. They then showed a movie that focused on all 4 of the presidents on the monument in great detail… it was so inspiring. I cried the entire time they spoke about Lincoln, he is my favorite! After that we sang the national anthem and during that they turned on the lights on Mt. Rushmore; it is so beautiful at night. They then honored veterans by having them come on the stage as we clapped for them and then they retired the flag. What a patriotic night! It just made us all feel so patriotic and proud to be an American… we all loved it so much! On our drive home we saw a couple of mountain goats too. It was a great night!