Day 67: Caves and More Caves

First, for anyone without a middle schooler, one of the cool things to say these days is 6-7. We have one kid who has really embraced this expression the ENTIRE trip and was thrilled to continually ask what day of the trip we were on today.

The Black Hills are known for the many miles of caves, so we opted for two different cave tours today. First was Jewel Cave in Jewel Cave National Monument. We had a phenomenal tour guide who shared lots of facts about the different types of formations and rocks. The infrastructure of stairs and curbed walking paths within the cave was mind-blowing. A highlight was the 20 ft long “cave bacon”.

We stopped in Custer on the way back for some lunch and to reenact the photo from our first cross country RV trip five years ago. We also picked up some more firewood to help us enjoy another peaceful evening at the campground.

Next up was the Natural Entrance Tour at Wind Cave National Park. It was also very cool, but due to our 40 person group size, we walked through in a long line, usually too far from the ranger to get much info. Nicholas opted to be at the front of the line so he had a better experience. This cave is known to have 95% of the world’s boxwork.

Once back from the cave tours, Rob had a meeting so the rest of us headed out for another quick hike to the Rankin Ridge Interpretive Trail. Five years ago, the hike conversations were all about Minecraft; this time around, mostly Brawl Stars and yachts. The chatter was so much that we all missed this bison just 20 feet off the trail until we were well past it and happened to turn around. Oops.

At the campground the boys opted to entertain themselves with some rope before dinner before settling in for another fire night.

Pictures never do it justice, but this was our attempt to show the starry night sky. Like last night, we were lucky enough to end the night seeing another shooting star.