WIND CAVE NATIONAL PARK AND CRAZY HORSE MEMORIAL
Huzzah! The internet! After living for 4 days with no land line, no cell phone, no internet, we have left the Heinrich cottage for Mitchell, SD, corn palace land. But Mitchell is a tale for tomorrow. First, day 19.
Today we went to Wind Cave National Park. On the way we passed the Crazy Horse Memorial. It is a work in progress. We didn’t go in but took a picture from the side of the road.
Then we went on to Wind Cave. I think it is a national park that not many people know about. However, it was the first cave to become a national park site in 1903 and the seventh national park overall. We took the FairgroundsTour which is a 1½ hour visit to two levels of the cave. The cave which has about 125 miles mapped out so far is a multilevel honeycomb. It’s really different from caves such as Carlsbad. There’s very little dripping and very few stalagmites and stalactites. It has a formation called boxwork. Boxwork is formed when water carrying minerals seep into cracks in the limestone. It hardens. The limestone erodes away. What you have left is like mortar with no bricks. Interesting.
