Black Hills Day Two

We started out our day by going back up the road we came into town to Jewel Cave.  We took the 1 1/2 hour scenic tour.  I love the smell of caves!  Jewel Cave is the 2nd largest cave in the world in terms of air volume.  It also has the longest known "cave bacon" formation in the world.  For I think the 1st time, I think a cave tour actually went smoothly for our family.

Elizabeth, Anastaya and Miriam earned their Junior Ranger badges and patches.  Miriam took the swearing in process very seriously and I had to hold her hand to help her get through it.

We went back to camp and it started to rain.

Here are the kids eating lunch in the trailer to hide from the rain. 

We'd planned to go on a bike ride but due to the rain, decided to drive the Iron Mountain Road to Mt. Rushmore.  The road is amazing and has got to be the best approach to Mt. Rushmore.  You go through a series of narrow one lane rock tunnels that give you increasingly up close views of Mt. Rushmore.  Each time the mountain would come into view again, Miriam would scream out, "The faces!"  The road winds through meadows and alpine areas and felt like hiking through the high country without any of the work.

We arrived at Mt.Rushmore for what I thought would be a quick visit and ended up being a four hour stay.  Our 1st stop was the visitor center where the kids picked up junior ranger booklets and we rented two audio tours.  As we talked around the monument, we learned a lot about the history.  The audio tour really added to our knowledge of the monument and was well worth the $5. Miriam's favorite activity was the simulated dymanite handle in the visitor center.  She could select what part of the mountain she wanted to blast on and push down the plunger and watch the explosion on a tv.  She did it over and over again.  William pushing buttons on the audio tour and listening to different information, not necessarily at the right spots.

I hadn't planned to be gone for so long so we had no food.  I ended up spending $4 a piece for ice cream cones, the cheapest thing for sale there, and called that dinner.  By the time we were ready to go, it was so close to the evening lighting ceremony that we decided to stay.  We sat and froze waiting for it to start.  Elizabeth, my little worrier, started to get nervous.  She felt that Mt. Rushmore is truly a national treasure and important to our country.  What if terrorists decided to bomb it to make our country feel bad and chose that very tim?.  We sang a few primary songs softly together and she was able to get past her fears.  Due to technical difficulties,  we didn't get to watch the movie they show before the lighting but it was still a patriotic and moving experience and well worth the late night.  We got back to our campsite at 10:15.  Everyone was so tired, we all went to bed without a real dinner.