There are several easy trails of about a mile or less to get a taste of the park. Avid hikers can strike out on their own without having to follow any trail at all and backcountry camping is allowed in the northwest area of the park. Plan some extra time to take advantage of 30 miles of hiking trails that allow an even more up-close interaction with the flora and fauna. The tour is only available in the summer.Įnjoy the scenic drive through the park though beware of the local traffic that sometimes get a little stubborn (bison herds often stand around on the roads). This tour takes place in small groups in a less developed, unlit section of the cave where guides and participants illuminate the way with candle buckets, much the way the early explorers did. Reservations open up a month in advance and they are highly recommended. This 1.5-hour tour explores both the upper and middle levels of Wind Cave.įor the romantics out there, pre-book a spot on the Candlelight Tour. For the more adventuresome, the Fairgrounds Tour is a good choice. This moderate tour twists through narrow passages and has 300 stairs (mostly downhill) and covers about two-thirds of a mile in a bit over an hour. Most popular is the Natural Entrance Tour-though there is no access into the cave through the 18-inch natural entrance, guests do get a chance to see it. It enters and leaves the cave by elevator with 150 steps along the tour route. This one hour tour gives a taste of everything the system has to offer. The easiest is the Garden of Eden Tour and is perfect for those with limited time or abilities.
A tour favorite is the ‘blackout’, when the guides turn out the lights for visitors to experience total darkness, though some may find this unsettling. While it may not have the expected collection of stalactites and stalagmites, the centerpiece attraction is home to an array of some of the finest rock formations in the world such as popcorn, frostwork, dogtooth spar crystals, flowstone, and the famous boxwork. With 60% of the land being open range, it’s easy to spot a variety of the park's residents: large herds of bison, pronghorn, elk, prairie dogs, and sometimes even shy wild turkeys and coyotes. Sacred to many of the Lakota people and other area tribes, Wind Cave and its environs are central to the Lakota oral creation story that says that this is where humans first emerged from within the earth to live on the surface.Įstablished as the eighth national park in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt, it stretches across 28,295 acres of South Dakota's only remaining mixed-grass prairie habitat and swaths of ponderosa pine forest. Air was blowing out of the small entrance they’d found with such force that it blew Tom’s hat clear off. As the story goes, in 1881, brothers Jesse and Tom Bingham were out hunting when they were drawn to the cave by an eerie whistling noise.
If a high-pressure system is coming, the cave will inhale. If a low-pressure system is inbound, the cave will exhale. Known as a "breathing cave", Wind Cave breathes in and out through the natural entrance depending on the barometric pressure of the incoming weather system. Early explorers thought they resembled post-office boxes and named them accordingly, dropping the "post office" for brevity. Wind Cave, the sixth-longest cave on Earth, is home to 95% of the earth’s boxwork, rare calcite formations that resemble honeycombs, that are found in few other places in the world. Driving across the sunlit prairie and through a forest teeming with wildlife, it’s easy to forget that the reason most people visit Wind Cave National Park is the labyrinthine system of unusual formations below ground.
0 kommentar(er)
