South Dakota Trip - Second Day

After a good night's sleep at the hotel, today's primary agenda item was to head out early to try to secure tickets to a cave tour at Jewel Cave, which was about 45 minutes west of Rapid City.  The tours are first come first serve for tickets each day, and we weren't necessarily sure which tour would be the best.  After a bit of stress related to picking the right tour and some significant kid behavior issues, we did in fact arrange for a lantern tour where you hold real burning lanterns and make your way around for an hour and a half hour tour.  A few hours later we met our drill sergeant/smokey the bear/park ranger tour guide to get our lanterns.  This guide was classic!  At first we didn't quite know what to make of him because he was so super serious and dressed in ranger clothing indicative of 100 years ago, knickers and all!  However, he grew on us and his knowledge was truly impressive.  It also turns out that he was an amateur spelunker and had discovered and named his own cave in the area some years back.  Above is the entrance to the cave that we would spend the next hour and half hour exploring.

The tour followed this cave as it burrowed into the ground.  We only really explored a small portion of this expansive cave system that is believed to go on for hundreds of miles in different directions.  The system is still being explored and mapped even to this day, and some professional expeditions go down into the caves for up to a week charting new areas.  It is difficult to see in the above picture, but this is actually looking upwards at Gavin, Gage, and Tara descending down this very tight staircase that has been constructed to aid in the tours of this part.  We dropped almost 30 feet straight down and then it continued horizontally as we went deeper into the mountain.  After about an hour, we reached the destination of the tour which was a room called the Heavenly Room due to a bright white crystal formation on the dome of this large cave room that looks kind of like Mother Mary and a baby.  We weren't able to get better pictures because cameras weren't allowed due to all the tight spaces you have to squeeze through.  What is pretty crazy is the temperature drop along the way.  It was ~40-50 degrees colder in the cave than it was outside in the summer heat.  After spending a bit of time in this room, we returned to the surface.  This was a truly awesome experience for all.

We finished up the morning cave tour just before lunch time and we weren't quite sure if we would have time to find another cave tour to go on, so we decided to take a drive up toward Lead (pronounced LEED) and Spearfish to the North.  This was about an hour drive through the forested hills and mountain lakes and was very beautiful.  As we were driving, we eventually settled on the idea of finding a waterfall and seeing if there was a little hike involved.  We found the waterfall above called Roughlock falls.

There was a small parking lot about one to two miles down from the falls.  The "hike" was more like a walk up a fairly mild trail that followed the meandering river down the canyon, but stretching the legs felt really good.  The kids were particularly interested in all of the nice trout that could be seen swimming.  They probably were so abundant because the whole area was protected from fishing.

After an hour or so of hanging around here, we headed back to the hotel to get some rest after the long day.