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Okay, now that I'm (sort of) settled back in at home, I suppose its time to write about the last day of our trip. After Mt. Rushmore, we really only had one more destination remaining on our tentative itinerary: Badlands National Park. However, we had enough time left to squeeze in one more addition.
So, when we got up on Friday morning, we headed to the Wind Cave National Park, of which I knew virtually nothing prior to our visit. It turns out to be an interesting place to visit. This cave has the world's most extensive deposits of Boxwork formations, and has 131 miles of explored passageways, making it the fourth-longest cave in the world. The only natural entrance is a 10-inch hole, through which the cave breathes, with air rushing in or out with changes in the atmospheric pressure outside. The wind speed at the cave mouth has been recorded as high as 75 mph. It is also a VERY dry cave, with almost no flowstone formation, such as those we saw at Carlsbad.
The park itself also includes a large area of high prairie, with bison, elk, pronghorn and prairie dogs, providing a scenic drive after exploring the cave. Overall, it was an interesting bookend to complement our visit to Carlsbad Caverns at the other end of the trip.
After leaving the Black Hills, we headed east on I-90 to Wall, SD, where we took a detour through the Badlands National Park. We had seen plenty of badlands erosion during the trip, most impressively in the painted desert of Arizona, but also in New Mexico and Utah. Even so, the Badlands National Park remained impressive, if only because the layers exposed by erosion here include colors that aren't present further south, including yellows and greens that added some surreal beauty to the formations here. Here also is evidence of the volcanic nature of Yellowstone, visible in thick layers of volcanic ash from previous eruptions. It is a bit intimidating to contemplate the massive scale of those eruptions and the potential impact of a future eruption.
After finishing our visit here, we decided to see how far we could push towards home. I drove for about four more hours before giving up the driver's seat to my wife. I climbed in the back seat of the van and went to sleep for about six hours. My wife and I traded again, and I drove for another six or seven hours. We traded twice more, driving straight through from South Dakota to Virginia, about 26 hours enroute (including meal, rest and fuel stops), arriving home in the early hours of Sunday morning. It was exhausting, but it was done, and we had time to unpack Sunday afternoon, before resuming our normal lives on Monday.
Our trip encompassed more than 7,700 miles over 19 days, including visits to 20 National Parks/Monuments and one State Park (in Utah). We were very busy, and had lots of very long days, but it was a memorable trip that was a lot of fun.
So, when we got up on Friday morning, we headed to the Wind Cave National Park, of which I knew virtually nothing prior to our visit. It turns out to be an interesting place to visit. This cave has the world's most extensive deposits of Boxwork formations, and has 131 miles of explored passageways, making it the fourth-longest cave in the world. The only natural entrance is a 10-inch hole, through which the cave breathes, with air rushing in or out with changes in the atmospheric pressure outside. The wind speed at the cave mouth has been recorded as high as 75 mph. It is also a VERY dry cave, with almost no flowstone formation, such as those we saw at Carlsbad.
The park itself also includes a large area of high prairie, with bison, elk, pronghorn and prairie dogs, providing a scenic drive after exploring the cave. Overall, it was an interesting bookend to complement our visit to Carlsbad Caverns at the other end of the trip.
After leaving the Black Hills, we headed east on I-90 to Wall, SD, where we took a detour through the Badlands National Park. We had seen plenty of badlands erosion during the trip, most impressively in the painted desert of Arizona, but also in New Mexico and Utah. Even so, the Badlands National Park remained impressive, if only because the layers exposed by erosion here include colors that aren't present further south, including yellows and greens that added some surreal beauty to the formations here. Here also is evidence of the volcanic nature of Yellowstone, visible in thick layers of volcanic ash from previous eruptions. It is a bit intimidating to contemplate the massive scale of those eruptions and the potential impact of a future eruption.
After finishing our visit here, we decided to see how far we could push towards home. I drove for about four more hours before giving up the driver's seat to my wife. I climbed in the back seat of the van and went to sleep for about six hours. My wife and I traded again, and I drove for another six or seven hours. We traded twice more, driving straight through from South Dakota to Virginia, about 26 hours enroute (including meal, rest and fuel stops), arriving home in the early hours of Sunday morning. It was exhausting, but it was done, and we had time to unpack Sunday afternoon, before resuming our normal lives on Monday.
Our trip encompassed more than 7,700 miles over 19 days, including visits to 20 National Parks/Monuments and one State Park (in Utah). We were very busy, and had lots of very long days, but it was a memorable trip that was a lot of fun.
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Date: 2009-08-04 02:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-05 01:20 am (UTC)