Wind Cave National Park

We camped one night at Wind Cave National Park just south of Custer Sate Park. We did some hiking, toured part of the cave system and were serenaded by the bugling of the park’s elk herd as we relaxed by our campfire. We were forced to turn back on our first attempt to hike because the bison pictured below would not budge from the trail and we decided ticking off a 2000 pound bison that can sprint at 30 miles an hour is just a bad idea! We were able to instead hike the Wind Canyon trail pictured below.

Wind Cave is the sixth longest cave in the world with 140 miles of cave discovered to date. The cave has three lakes at 600 feet below the surface. We toured with a park ranger and descended to a depth of 212 feet. This cave system is truely a maze with all 140 miles of passage contained within a square mile. The cave is also notable in that 95% of the known boxwork (photo below) in the world is contained within this cave system.