National Park #13, canceled August 9, 2019
Wind Cave was the last national park we visited on our summer 2019 road trip. We arrived from Badlands via Mt. Rushmore and Custer State Park. Just outside Custer and on our way in to Wind Cave, we saw a bunch of prairie dogs with two coyotes scouting them out. There was also a large coiled rattlesnake in the road. We got camp set up in time for the evening ranger program. Mikayla wondered if we really needed the rain fly so we asked the ranger, who informed us about the 50% chance of thunderstorms. We reluctantly put it on, then had to do some makeshift tent surgery involving needle nose pliers, Burt’s beeswax, and duct tape as our main zipper had become completely useless.
Well. It’s a really good thing we listed to the ranger. Shortly before 3:00 am, we were inundated with thunder, lightning, wind, rain, and hail. As it got worse, we decided to move to the car to have a bit more protection than the tent. It was seriously nuts! We had to go out the back door because of the broken zipper (duct tape doesn’t work well on tents, in case you were wondering). Once it settled down, we went back to the tent. Needless to say, we had a bit of a puddly mess to clean up in the morning, but we all managed to get back to sleep for a few hours once the storm passed.
After getting everything as dry as possible and packed into the car, we went to the visitor center and enjoyed a ranger talk at the natural entrance where Wind Cave was discovered. The elevator was broken so we couldn’t go into the cave, but the natural entrance was really cool! The 53-degree air was blowing out (hence the name Wind Cave), and sometimes it sucks air from the outside in; it depends on the external air pressure and the cave’s need to equalize internally. We’re definitely going to need to come back here since a visit to Wind Cave hardly counts if you can’t actually see Wind Cave, but we can’t say what we did experience wasn’t an adventure!
Leave a Reply