Finne's Follies: Hanging out in the Black Hills

Rapid City and the Black Hills are a tourist's delight. From railroad museums to reptile gardens to dinosaur exhibits to caves to actual wildlife (if you're lucky enough to happen upon them) to just beautiful scenery-- this area has it all. We put down our jacks in the town of Black Hawk, a few miles northwest of Rapid City and parked for five days.

The lonely bison bull

Since we'd been in the area twice within the past few years, we tried to find some things to see and do that we missed the last two times. So on Saturday, we drove down to Custer State Park at the south end of the Black Hills, paid the entrance fee, and drove the "Wildlife Loop"-- about twenty miles or so of land that promised wandering bison, deer, pronghorns, and possibly even mountain lions. Promised...not delivered. Granted, it was the hottest day of the entire year the day we chose to make the drive, and a certain late sleeper dragged her feet getting out the door so that we didn't arrive in the park until noonish. But still, the disappointment was heavy. We saw one bison bull some way off the road, and a herd of them in the indistinguishable distance. But, nothing crossed our path that day.

Downtown Custer

Our next stop was the town of Custer, where we stopped for lunch, and then we headed west to Jewel Cave National Monument. We arrive there about 2:30 and were informed, to our dismay, that all the tours were booked up to the end of the day. We had planned to visit Wind Cave National Park on the same day, but by that time, it was too late to get in there either. On the bright side, the scenery was beautiful, and we did see some comical prairie dogs along the way. One of them even waved at us as we drove by.

It was obvious we were going to need a game plan if we were going to manage anything besides driving around in the car sucking down gas. So we perused the tourist books after we got home and picked out just a couple things we really wanted do in the remaining few days.

Sunday morning, we got up early...well, I got up early. Mark always gets up early, and we decided to drive the wildlife loop one more time and then head south to the Wind Cave Monument, since it was closer. The wildlife were still mostly in hiding. We spotted a couple lone bison near the road, but the herds were well off in the distance. The highlight of our drive was a group of burrows that had mozied onto the road where they were rewarded with apples from passing tourists. I did not think to bring along apples on account of the many signs posted around the park telling people not to feed the animals.

Tour guide holds a ribbon over the wind opening
showing the air movement...light breeze today.

The Wind Cave tour was interesting. The caves were not huge and spectacular, but they had some features not found in any other caves around the world. The cave got its name on account of an opening at the surface from which air flows in and out as the barometric pressure changes, creating a wind that sometimes reaches as high as 70 mph. We were a little intimidated when we read the descriptions of each of the tours - duration, number of stairs, tight spaces, etc. Worried that we might find the "Fairgrounds Tour" stair climbing too taxing, we chose the "Natural Entrance Tour," which also had a lot of stairs, but they were all going down, with an elevator ride back to the surface afterward. It was about a half mile of walking and we did just fine.

"Boxwork" formation on cave ceiling unique to Wind Cave

Wind Cave offers a variety of tours, including one for very physically fit "cavers" (a tour of about four hours that requires a lot of crawling), and one where candle light is the only illumination - mimicking the conditions of the original explorers. I don't see myself ever going on either one of those, but there are at least two others we can check out the next time we come, for an entirely new experience.

Monday, we drove into Hill City, in the heart of the Black Hills. There we visited a couple of South Dakota's several wineries, and ate dinner at the Alpine Inn, a restaurant that was recommended to us by Mark's brother, Bruce. If you're ever in the area, this is a must-do. They serve one thing for dinner (unless you count German dumplings as food, then there are two things) -- filet minon! You can get a complete dinner with a glass of house wine for less than $20. Incredible! And delicious.

Mark and I both love this part of the country. No doubt we'll be back, probably every year, since it's conveniently located between two places we regularly visit: Minneapolis and Spokane. There's so much to see and do here, we're not likely to get tired of it for a long time to come.