08/16/09
Today we for sure didn’t have a schedule. We checked out of the Powder House Lodge, after staying in the cabin. We had so much fun there. We left and went to eat at a local restaurant. They are known for their huge buns, cinnamon that is. We ate and went on our next journey. We wanted to head to Jewel Cave but we wanted to take a different route. So we went up Iron Mountain and realized we took a very round about and out of the way, but we have some great pictures from the top of the mountains of Mt. Rushmore. We saw wild buffalo, fed wild mules, saw piggy back bridges and lots of wild flowers. It was a great out of the way trip. We made our way through Custar to onto Jewel cave and finally arrived, two hours later. Nick went up to buy our tickets and they said the whole day was sold out. So now what……
We decided to go to Wind Cave, so we turned back around and went back the way we just came from and went to Wind Cave. It was packed, later we found out it was free day at the monument. We went on a hour tour of the cave. It was amazing. At this time they have discovered 132 miles of the cave and that is only 10% of the cave. 90% of the cave has been undiscovered. We headed out of Wind Cave around 4:30 and knew we had a very long trip ahead of us. We passed back over into Central time so we lost an hour. We finally made it to Sioux Falls at 11:30 pm. We were exhausted and ready for bed.