Day 9 - Still in South Dakota

Mammoth Site & Wind Cave National Park

Almost intact mammoth skeleton

Today we made a switch from live animals to animals in their less intimidating fossil form.  The nearby Mammoth Site was a great trip.  It’s located at a prehistoric pond which had steep, slippery sides.  Over the course of hundreds of years, many mammoths and other animals fell in and were unable to get out.  So it’s a treasure trove of fossils, including many giant mammoths.  It’s still an active archeological site, but we were here on a Sunday so no one was working.  I think Disney and the like ruins your brain after a while – looking down at the half-excavated mammoth skeletons, it was very hard to believe it was real.

The highlight was their Junior Archaeologist program.  The group of kids who’d signed up were brought back into another building where there were huge boxes filled with dirt.  They were given an archaeologist’s toolkit and set loose to dig up their own “fossils”.  Nadia immediately hit upon a bear’s leg bone, while Zoe and Lanie took a little longer to discover their finds (mammoth leg bone and mammoth neck vertebrate, respectively).  They all had a grand time and decided to commemorate the occasion by using some of their trip money on Mammoth Site glow-in-the-dark T-shirts.  (Given that this could buy another day’s reprieve from laundry duty, I didn’t object too much to this choice.)

Actual size mammoth leg bone

Excavated bear leg bone

Hard at work

For the afternoon we visited nearby Wind Cave National Park for a picnic lunch then a tour of the cave.  I liked this cave a lot better than Howe Caverns – it seemed more real and the narrow winding passages were more impressive than the larger passageways at Howe.  We were able to enter the cave through the “natural entrance” (OK, this actually turned out to be a revolving door, but at least we didn’t go down through an elevator).  The cave has this beautiful lattice-like formation called boxwork, which is found in few other caves in the world (Wind Cave has 95% of the world’s boxwork, supposedly).

Into the cave

The famous boxwork

Lanie receiving her Custer Junior Naturalist patch

We had a double whammy with the accursed Junior Ranger badges today.  They rushed to complete their Wind Cave ones, but Zoe had to go on a hike to complete hers.  This ordinarily would have been a perfectly enjoyable event, but 

we were really pressed for time so it ended up being her and me racing through the first section of the trail, with me muttering, “Look at the grasses.  Have you found the three kinds you need?” which was probably not the sort of nature experience that those who’d designed the program had in mind.  They had to turn in their Custer State Park booklets tonight too, and Nadia hadn’t gotten around to finishing hers.  Anxiety and tears ensued, but it all ended in a kind ranger giving her the patch on the understanding that she would finish her one last page later.

A novel way to get rid of your broccoli

We drove the wildlife loop one more time on our way back to our campsite – this time we managed to keep Lanie awake (with difficulty), and the girls were prepared for the burros with carrots and broccoli.  (They’d learned that this is the one park animal you’re allowed to feed.)  Once again, without provocation, one of the buggers put its head through my window.  This time I was looking in the opposite direction, at the one Zoe was feeding.  When Bob told me to look behind me, I was expecting to see a buffalo in the distance or something, and jumped about a foot when I found the burro about 6 inches away.  Again, much amusement from the rest of the crew.

This was our last night at Custer, and we tried to pack up what we could since we have a long drive ahead tomorrow.  The one negative is that the drought has led to a campfire ban – a major disappointment to girls with visions of s’mores dancing in their heads.  But they were able to catch one last campfire program before falling exhausted into bed.

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From Bob:

The spectrum of camp lodging spans almost as far as the prairie itself.  Many, many types are on display here.  Our tent would appear to be on the rudimentary end, but we are actually living fairly large in our nylon cocoon.  Along the tent row, we were bordered on one side last night by a pup tent designed for two people – two horizontal people.  At least we can stand up in our tent.   The other neighboring site supported a small village of tents – two low structures and a hammock-like device that could be described as a pup tent suspended between two trees.  I think at least one person slept in that, but I wasn’t spying ardently enough to see.

                Don’t get me wrong, we’re still well to the small side of the spectrum, as evidenced by the fact that Zoe, Nadia and I were able to carry our tent several spaced down the road to our new tents site, which, I guess, is where we were originally supposed to set up when we arrived. 

                Now, we’re in a whole different neighborhood.  Our immediate neighbors are tenters, but they have two tents plus a canopy kind of guy that covers the picnic table and some kitchen furniture they trucked along with them.  This includes a kind of baker’s rack with their cook stove and about a dozen coffee mugs hanging from hooks.  These people have a U-Haul trailer that they carried their camping gear with. 

It spirals up from there.    We’ve seen two or three VW vans.  There are modified pickup trucks and old fashioned, hard-sided pull-behinds.  Pop-up campers seem popular with families similar to ours – those with multiple young kids.  Just looking at the section of this campground that we’ve seen, there appear to be hundreds of varieties of these things. 

Then there are the majestic Land Yachts – huge busses of luxury that we’ve seen rolling across the country for most of our trip out here.  Often they tow SUVs behind them.  Many of these guys have come to roost in Custer State Park.   There are some gleaming examples only a few sites from ours, shiny, smooth-riding and just awesome to behold.  Most seem to be occupied by two people apiece.  Several yachtsmen have brought their own lawn ornaments.  Many have their air conditioning running all day long.   They have their own row in the campground and seem to get along well with each other.

I can only wonder what they think of us, carrying our tent down the road.  They may not see tenters  that often.  We have passed countless campgrounds along our route out west that seem to be parking lots for these things.  Of course, we won’t see the tents would we?  The tents are all in the woods, hidden by trees.  Why are we hidden by trees? you ask.  Shelter.  If one of those yachtsmen fails to set his parking break and they’ll run right over us like a speed bump.  Less than a speed bump, really.

So far, our kids have not expressed a desire for anything but our tent, which is nice.  Of course, they’re not likely to ever talk us into a land yacht. But if they’re not even trying, it means we’re having fun just the way we are.