On Day 4 of our trip, we woke up in the Badlands of South Dakota. Like I said in our previous post, this is a truly beautiful place and the campground was an awesome place to stay. We cooked breakfast surrounded by buttes and being greeted with the most amazing morning breeze. Once we finished breakfast and cleaned up, we packed up the camper. We were headed to Wind Cave National Park, with an end goal of staying somewhere in Wyoming (more on that later).

A side note for anyone who is planning on ever owning a camper. When you use a dump station, PLEASE for the love of God, clean up after yourself! The dump station at Cedar Pass Campground had the remnants of a previous user, much to Scott’s dismay.

We took off on our next adventure along I-90. We ran into plenty of thunderstorms, which were both amazing and terrifying. You could actually see the entire storm from end to end. This also meant you could see all of the lightning and rain you were headed toward.

 

As a detour on our way to Wind Cave National Park, we went to a place called Bear Country. This is a touristy place where you drive through and wild animals are all around you. Bears, wolves, and bighorn sheep are just a few we saw. It was neat, but we felt sort of bad for the bears. There was a lot of pacing like you see at the zoo, which means they were bored. They also had a “Babyland” area for the baby bears. They separate the babies once they are weaned from the mothers to protect them from being killed by the males. They were super cute!

After that, we headed to Mount Rushmore. I will admit, that until the day I saw it in person, I was convinced that Mount Rushmore was not real. It looks too perfect! We took a short hike, took a few pictures, and headed out. We also had an encounter with another #kathy at the entrance gate, but we didn’t let her ruin our trip!

 

We also decided that while we were in the area, we might as well go see the Crazy Horse Memorial as well! For those who don’t know, the Crazy Horse memorial was planned and started in 1948. The original artist, Korczak Ziolkowski, died in 1982 with most of the work unfinished. His dying wish was that his wife and 10 children finish the work. In 1998, the face of Crazy Horse was completed and revealed. Today, there is still much work to be done.

 

We continued on our way, and eventually made it to Wind Cave National Park. If you are someone who is frightened of the dark, small spaces, or is worried about going underground, there is still a lot of things to do in Wind Cave (50 miles of hiking trails!). However, Scott and I decided to go on a cave tour. We completed the Fairgrounds tour, which was about 1.5 hour tour. Our tour was led by Ranger Callie, who was amazing! She was extremely knowledgeable, had a “dad” sense of humor, and led us through the maze of Wind Cave.

Wind Cave is one of the coolest caves I have ever been inside. What is unique about this cave is it’s makeup. The cave is made up of something called “boxwork”, which is a specific type of formation. Ranger Callie explained that when South Dakota was underwater, the shells of the sea animals fell to the ground to create limestone. Over time, the limestone formed cracks in which calcite deposits formed. When the sea was no longer, the limestone wore away, leaving the calcite “boxwork” behind. Wind Cave is also special because, as Ranger Callie said, it breathes. This cave reacts to the changing pressures of the atmosphere, and breathes in or out depending on the pressure. When we visited, the cave was breathing out in a reaction to the lower pressure from the coming storms.

Wind Cave was definitely a cool stop along our trip, and if you are in the area to see Mount Rushmore or the Badlands, it is definitely worth a stop and a tour! There is also a TON of wildlife to see- we drove past a buffalo that if I had really wanted to, I could have reached out and touched it’s fur! Pictures below!

We finally crossed the state line into Wyoming. This was our 7th state in just FOUR days of our trip! We had planned on driving 3.5 hours to a campground in Buffalo, WY, but were pretty tired so decided to find something last minute in Gillete, WY. This proved to be difficult. I had found a campground with pretty good reviews on Google, called High Prairie. I called, the woman gave me all the info, and we headed in that direction. When we got there, though, it seemed to be a rather run down campground. We aren’t uppity campers by any means, but just didn’t like the look and feel of the campground. We decided last minute to then just spend the night in the local Walmart parking lot. Most Walmarts around the country allow people to sleep in the lot during the night, and we just needed a quick place to crash for the night. You can’t beat free! 🙂

On our next post, we head to Yellowstone National Park and Henry’s Lake State Park in Idaho!