Home on the range (South Dakota range, that is)

Home, home on the range...

Where the deer and the pronghorn antelope play

Were the buffalo roam (in the road)

Where seldom is heard a disparaging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day

And those prairie dogs!  My gosh, they are cute, but the fields are overrun with them!  Imagine a field full of over-sized hamsters....

We drove from CO today through eastern Wyoming on our way to the Black Hills of South Dakota.  WY is beautiful in it's own strange way.  Endless highways

All going through barren land

We made our way to the southwestern corner of South Dakota, to the Wind Cave National Park.
The park consists of over 132 miles of cave, all layered beneath a square mile of land.  It's the 5th longest cave in the world, as measured by total length of explored passages.  The wind through the cave is caused by changes in the barometric pressure as air in the cave is constantly trying to equalize the pressure within the cave to the outside.  When the barometric pressure falls, wind rushes out of the cave.  When the barometric pressure rises, the wind rushes into the cave.  Cool, huh!  The natural entrance to the cave is only 10 inches in diameter.  Needless to say, we took the man made entrance!

It was impossible to get good photos inside the cave.  If you are interested, please check out the webpage.  http://www.nps.gov/wica/historyculture/index.htm

As we drove toward Rapid City for the night, we passed the Crazy Horse Memorial.  http://www.crazyhorsememorial.org/   Started in 1948, the project has never been finished.  It's been on hold for a long time, but is "in process".  VERY impressive!

Tomorrow we'll visit Mt. Rushmore!  Then the rest of the day in the Badlands National Park - after that, we start the long march home.  It's been a great trip.