Last night and this morning it rained hard. Just up the hill from us on the other side of the gravel road, they are doing construction to add additional RV sites. The rain washed a lot of dirt out of the construction site and across the gravel road. Lucky for us there is a little hump directly behind our Wanderer so the mud filled water was diverted into the two sites next to us (not so lucky for them). With more rain forecasted for the afternoon, we decided to stay closer to “home” (Home is where we park the Wanderer these days) and went to Jewel Cave National Monument. Jewel cave was discovered by Frank and Albert Michaud who were riding their horses and heard a whistling noise. When they investigated, they found a small hole in the ground with cool air forcing its way out. The hole was too small for them to crawl through, so they went into Rapid City and bought mining tools and dynamite and blasted a larger opening into the cave. Seeing the Calcite crystals on the wall, they figured they had hit the jackpot and rode back to Rapid City to file a mining claim for the Jewel Tunnel Load. They never did find any jewels and eventually turned to trying to make money giving tours like they were doing at Wind Cave. But Jewel Cave was too remote and they never made much off the mine. In 1908, the cave was made a National Monument by President Roosevelt. The reason this cave is a National Monument verses a National Park (like Wind Cave) is because of the signing of the Antiquities Act of 1906. The Antiquities Act gave the president the ability to set aside government owned lands for the preservation of resources and place of historical or geological importance. A National Park designation takes an act of congress. So Wind Cave was made a National Park before the Antiquities Act and Jewel Cave was made a National Monument because of the Antiquities Act.
We arrived at Jewel cave about 9:20 to find all the Ranger Led tours before 12:40 had already been sold out. So we grabbed two tickets ($12 each) for the 12:40 Scenic Tour. There was a ranger led tour at 10am that walked the Roof Trail. So we got our stamp (#8), explored the exhibits in the visitor center until 10am and caught the Ranger led tour. Our first hint of what was to come should have been the number of kids with Jr. Ranger Badges and books that were in the tour. Alas, the tour was orient more towards the kids with little tid bits for us adults. We learned that the Joshua fire in 2000 burned a large segment of the Monument due to the amount of brush that had built up over the years of immediately stopping forest fires instead of recognizing they were a important part of the ecosystem. The Joshua fire, which was caused by arson, burned particularly hot and not only burned up the Ponderosa Pines but also the roots of the prairie grasses and the pinecones. So recovery was going very slow. But from what we could see, it was a sea of green grasses and burned tree stumps. The Young Man leading the tour was a college student working for the summer at the monument through the Student Conservation Association (SCA). His major was in Climate Engineering. Don’t ask me what that means, but it sounds suspiciously like something to do with Global Warming. With two hours left to kill, we drove back to the Wanderer for a quick lunch before going back for our Cave tour.
Our guide for the tour was Ranger Cave Guide. It seems the US mail had lost her ranger badge with her name on it, Jennifer, so her name badge was Cave Guide. Before going down the elevators, we learned that Jewel cave was the third largest cave in the world with over 195 miles to date. They believe they have only mapped 5% of the cave so far. The day we were there, a team of cave explorers was headed in for four days of mapping new parts of the cave. The walls of this cave were covered with Nailhead Spar calcite formations several inches thick. This cave stayed wetter, longer than Wind Cave resulting in the formation of the Nailhead Spar. The colors changed in different parts of the cave due to the different minerals present in different parts of the cave. One of the people on the tour was carrying a 9 month old baby in a chest harness. Now why a mother would take a young baby into a slippery, wet, and cold cave is beyond me. Although the baby never cried loudly, it blubbered, wailed, and made loud baby noises for the whole tour. In the cave, it was loud enough that he would drown out the Ranger if you were close. So we spent part of our time trying to make sure we did not get stuck close to the cute blubbering babe after each stop. The entrance we went through was installed in the 1960s. The historic entrance, that the Michoud brothers blasted out, only allowed access to a small portion of the cave. A portion of the cave was wet so there was beautiful flow formations, Cave Bacon, tubes, and stalagmites and stalactites. The temperature was colder than Wind Cave (49F) and damper (98% humidity). David had to keep ducking due to the low ceilings and we had to watch our footing due to the dampness. But it was an enjoyable tour and Ranger Jennifer made the tour interesting (when we could hear her over blubbering baby).
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| Flow Formation |
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| Cave Bacon Formation |
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