I knew when I started planning this trip that we were not going to have time to see everything. The hardest part was deciding what things were going to make the cut. There is so much to do in the Black Hills area of South Dakota -- we would need at least a couple more days to cover what we missed. Hopefully we'll make it back someday...
Our first stop this morning was Wind Cave National Park. We took another cave tour, but this one was more standard than the lantern tour yesterday, including lighted walkways, handrails, and stairs. The tour started out at the natural entrance to the cave...
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The difference in barometric pressure was causing
the wind to blow out of the cave today. |
Once inside, the tour took us down about 300 steps...
...and stopped at various places where
boxwork was visible.
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| Boxwork |
Afterwards, the boys finished their Jr. Ranger booklets and received their badges. I've lost count which one this is...
The proposal to eat another lunch in the car was gladly accepted because of the promise of ice cream at Mt. Rushmore. Here's another view of it during the day...
This exhibit showed footage of various places being dynamited during the creation of the memorial, which you could trigger by pressing down on the plunger...
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| Fire in the hole! |
From here we drove on past Rapid City to one of the Minuteman Missile NHS interpretive areas, D-9.
This was the location of one of the Minuteman II launch facilities (missile silos), that was decommissioned as part of the
START treaty in 1991.
There wasn't a park ranger present, but you could take a self-guided audio tour of the site using a cell phone. The boys had a lot of questions -- before today, their limited understanding of the cold war and nuclear weapons came from the History Channel's World War II documentaries on the atomic bombs used against Japan and the very accurate Matthew Broderick '80s movie, "War Games". Looking forward to touring the launch control facility, D-1, tomorrow morning.
Unfortunately, today was the first really
*HOT* day we've had on the trip, so no one was very excited about getting out of the car to explore the Badlands. You'll have to settle for pics from the scenic turnouts...
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| Big Badlands Overlook |
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| Homestead Overlook |
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| Yellow Mounds |
Last stop... Wall Drug! Free ice water! And boy, did we ever need it!
1 comment:
Wow, what could be better than seeing the "Big Heads" in person. I must say that Washington had a prominent nose.
Nice picture of the ranger at the wind cave, looks like he's pulling something a bit odd from his pants?!?
-Sean
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