Tag: prairies

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:

Not nearly as glamorous as the name “Jewel” Cave implies!

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:

It really looked like 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.

Prairie dogs are tiny! I expected something the size of a groundhog, not a guinea pig.

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.

The prairie is so beautiful.

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

The food is good at the Sage Creek Grille (though I liked the ambiance more)

Blue Mounds State Park

This morning, Greg and I took the Prairie and Bison Bus Tour at Blue Mounds State Park.

We got to see the bison herd almost as soon as the tour started.
The prairie was beautiful and so different from anything I’ve seen before.

I learned some pretty cool facts on the tour:

  • The prairie needs to be burned every few years to keep it healthy and prevent it from evolving. People have been burning prairies for thousands of years.
  • No bison currently living in the US is purebred due to cattle/bison inbreeding many years ago by ranchers.
  • Only 4% of the original long grass prairie remains in the U.S.
  • The soil that makes up the prairie of Blue Mounds State Park is at most 3 ft. deep. Underneath the soil is up to 350 ft of Sioux quartzsite. Because of that, the root system goes sideways rather than down.
  • Bison like to hang out together, so it is rare to find one on its own.
  • The various parks that breed bison swap the bulls between them in order to prevent too much inbreeding.

We saw some cool wildlife on our tour, too. Thanks to another woman on the tour, who had a powerful set of binoculars, we got to see a red tail hawk and a falcon. We also got to see some pheasants.

Our tour guide was delightful.

Palisades State Park

Next, we headed to Palisades State Park. This was a cute park with some beautiful quartzsite cliffs along Split Rock Creek.

I could post about 20 pictures from this park. I thought it was beautiful.

I really wanted to be one of those kayakers!

One more photo, just because.

Falls Park

Next, we headed to Falls Park in downtown Sioux Falls.

The feels-like temp today was between 100 and 103 degrees, despite the cloud cover (humidity over 70 percent), and Greg was beat by this point, so he took a little convincing to keep going. But after a short stint in the air-conditioned camper, he was game.

And in the end, we were both glad that we went. Wow. Falls Park was a pleasant surprise!

It’s a wonderful community park with a water playground for kids, shops, picnic areas, and restaurants. But the highlight of the park is the falls.

You don’t see something like this right in the heart of a city very often. It was very cool. (By the way, that building is a cafe.)

Miscellany

Some observations about Wisconsin and South Dakota:

  • The names of county roads in Wisconsin are letters of the alphabet (e.g. County Road V, County Road E). In South Dakota, the names of county roads are numbers (e.g. County Road 478, County Road 452).
  • The roads are so straight!
  • The fields of crops (corn or soybeans) are so vast that they disappear into the horizon. It’s all farmland here.
  • People in South Dakota say hi to you when walking past you.
  • The roads in Wisconsin are in terrible condition. So are a lot of the roads in South Dakota. Even I-90, which is a major highway!
  • The roads in South Dakota are sparsely traveled. We went nearly 20 miles today and only passed one other car.
  • We’ve been feeling a bit like we’re driving across the top of the world, even though our elevation is only 1200 ft. above sea level. I think it’s because the landscape is so flat that the horizon is very far away.
Until tomorrow!