Our stay in Rapid City was a wonderful little break on the way home. We started out on the night of our arrival with a surprise family dinner with relatives that were also traveling through the area. After the wine, steak and a good night’s sleep, we woke up in the morning to drive over to Mount Rushmore.
Mount Rushmore is a national monument that contains the heads of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt (Theodore), and Lincoln carved into the Black Hills. The view as we drove up was magical, but there was definitely a commercial aspect once we arrived to the place that I have seen featured in magazines, tv and movies for all my life.
After a few photos, we explored the visitor center, and the ranger pushed the junior ranger booklet on us even though we thought Max was still a little young to do any of the activities. It turns out that we were wrong, he did a great job with a little parental help, and Max earned his first junior ranger badge!
After Mount Rushmore we worked our way across the Black Hills to Custer State Park. We had skipped Yellowstone on our journey so we were hoping to introduce our toddler to their herd of bison. The decision to skip Yellowstone was fortunate. Originally made to avoid managing our curious toddler on the boardwalks around the hot springs, mudpots, etc; it proved fortuitous as heavy rains and runoff led to raging rivers and flooding.
After about an hour enjoying the scenery and drive through Custer state park, we stopped at the Wildlife Station Visitor Center and had them point us in the right direction. They did and we were eternally grateful, as we would have driven that entire wildlife loop road without seeing them! They were in the interior of the park along a dirt road, and we never would have found them without help.
So we setoff on another adventurous dirt road. As we pulled up to the herd it reminded us of Yellowstone, since there was a bison jam of cars and the animals were walking between and amongst them. We basically turned off the car and sat there to enjoy the view and the interactions. The car got trapped in, and we got some great pictures as a result. When we finally freed up we took advantage, turned our car around, and started making our way through the bison jam out of there. It took us a while to get out and then finish the wildlife loop out of the park.
At the end of the day we ran over to Wind Cave National Park to pick up our passport stamp, and explored the visitor center. We stopped at the sign and watched the prairie dogs run around. They were fun, but not as big of attraction as they were the day before at Devils Tower when we first encountered them and watched them run about and interact for a long while.
They weren’t running cave tours at Jewel Cave when we got there because of a problem with their elevator, but while we were there they made an announcement that the elevator was fixed and we grabbed some tickets to take advantage. We had a few minutes to prepare, and Jayne strapped Max into our front facing baby carrier and steeled herself to carry him for the journey. She did an amazing job throughout, as we climbed down the stairs into the cool cave and twisted and turned through our cave tour.
On our way into the cave we took a moment at the natural entrance, before walking over to a large door and starting our descent down the stairs. Wind Cave is one of the longest caves in the world and known for its boxwork, a honeycomb-like structure formed in the rocks. We saw plenty on our tour.
The only problem was that when we reached the end of the tour the elevator actually did not work!! Our ranger called up to the visitor center to let them know and after some waiting for other rangers to reach us we got to do the tour in reverse, as the only way out was the stairs that we used to climb down at the beginning.
Most of the tour group powered right up those stairs, and Jayne and I did too (sort of), but when we got to the top we were exhausted and we sat down for a long while to rest and recover.
We drove back to Custer and sat down for a long dinner at Pizza Hut. We found a hotel to stay at nearby in Custer and then we made plans to do another cave tour at Jewel Cave National Monument the next day.
Unlike our prior experience with Wind Cave, Jewel Cave went smoothly. We arrived early for our short family friendly tour. We got to take the elevator both down into and up from the cave. Jewel Cave is currently the fifth longest cave in the world. We stayed in the large cave room for the entirety of the tour and did not do any cave exploration.
There is no known connection between Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, and the estimates that we saw were that one will not be found, although you never know. Despite the fact that they are not far away, they are not connected on the surface either. For those who have been to Mammoth Cave before
We were hoping to do both Badlands and Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, but as we were getting out of the Rapid City area we realized we were only going to have time for one, and we decided to focus our time on Badlands National Park.
We took I-90 to Exit 131 and the northeast entrance to the Badlands loop, and got started, with just enough time to send Jayne into the visitor center for the stamp. We did a lot of driving and photographing, since we knew that we didn’t have a lot of time and we were going to lose the light if we wandered. We completed the loop and exited at the Pinnacles Entrance to head up to Wall, SD.
Wall as it turns out is home to a famous tourist trap (attraction) called Wall Drugs that got its start as a pharmacy offering free ice water in the 1930s. More than 2 million people stop here annually now. We were hungry so we got dinner and picked up some souvenirs as we explored. We got back on the road after dark, and headed east on I-90 to get a few hours down the road and find a hotel.
