Our Family Trip 2015 : Wind Cave!

On Tuesday morning, July 21st we got up, had breakfast and I headed over to wash some clothes in the RV park coin laundry while Kyla packed us some lunches.  We got on the road and headed down to see the depths of the earth in Wind Cave National Park.  Here we are in the visitors center waiting for our tour to start (above).

The map below shows the extent of windcave that has been discovered and mapped.  As of November 2014, the cave has been measured at 143.16 miles long, making it the seventh longest caves in the world. They believe that it is still many times longer, due to the volume of air exchange from the cave...

Here we are with our tour guide at the entrance to the cave.  She asked us how big we thought the natural entrance of one of the longest caves on earth would be...

And then she showed us.  See that little hole?  Would you enter there?

Finally we headed down into the earth from the man-made door entrance.  I decided, as we descended over 150 steps down into the earth, that caves were not my happy place.  It was all very interesting and fascinating however, and soon I got used to the cold, dark, claustrophobic, closed-in feeling.    The rest of the family did great too.  We ended up being about 200 feet under ground, almost 22 stories down!

We saw a lot of interesting formations including this boxwork (below).  Wind Cave has the most boxwork of any known cave in the world...

Here are some other pictures of features and formations in the cave.  All pictures taken by Kyla...

Wind Cave was named for the air exchange that takes place from the cave when the barometric pressure changes.  At the natural entrance of the cave, the wind can be strong enough at times, to blow your hat off or to suck it into the cave, depending on the difference in pressure from the outside and inside, as it tries to equalize.

At the end of our tour an elevator brought us back up to the light and sunshine of a beautiful day.  I was glad to put my feet back on the solid ground on TOP of the earth! ;)

Our plan for the day included going the Jewel Cave National Monument next.  At 177 miles of mapped passages, Jewel Cave is the 3rd longest cave in the world and has many interesting features and formations...

Unfortunately, when we got to Jewel Cave all the tours were sold out for the rest of the day.  We looked around the visitors center a bit and then we had to leave without seeing it...

We were a little disappointed, but we headed on down the road for our next adventure.

More to come...