Jewel Cave

On Friday, we drove the 2 hours back, past our campground, and continued on to Jewel Cave. We took the cave Scenic Tour.

Since I doubt any of my readers are as obsessed with caves as I am, I will try to keep this short.

This cavern got its name from the calcite crystals covering its walls.

Most of the crystals aren’t as sparkly and pristine as the ones in the picture above, though. Most are covered in a dirty crust, so they look like this:

Jewel Cave is a “breathing cave.” The air inside changes pressure as the pressure outside changes, creating a breeze through the cave.

So far, volunteers have mapped 253 miles of Jewel Cave. Based on the pressure changes within the cave, scientists believe that only about 3% of the cave has been mapped so far.

We saw lots of different cave formations in Jewel Cave, but my favorite was probably the cave bacon:

Custer State Park — Wildlife Loop

After our tour of Jewel Cave, we headed back to the campground.  I was so tired that I took a nice, long nap.

Then we headed over to Custer State Park to see if we could pick up a park pass. On impulse, we decided to do the Wildlife Loop.

Shortly after starting along the loop, we came upon this scene:

I was a little freaked out, I’m not gonna lie. And it didn’t help when Greg GOT OUT OF THE CAR to take a picture. I yelled and told him he was an idiot.

Later, we got to see some pronghorn.

And LOTS of prairie dogs.

Greg had really been hoping to see some elk, but it was not to be. However, we did get to see some longhorn steer as we were heading toward Custer.

To be honest, I think my favorite part of the drive was the scenery.

Since it was 7 pm by then, we decided to grab dinner in Custer rather than make dinner at the campground.