Trip time, once again! This time, we were going North by Northwest... yes, we'll get to that later. This Chronicle covers several days and is VERY long and picture-loaded. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

 

Our route led us across upper Nebraska, along the South Dakota border - we all three were along on THIS trip - me, the Untrackable GeoDad, and Sioncat the Trackable Geokitten! There was skullduggery ahead! But before we ran into any, we had to traverse the solar system, from where the Sun shone in Norfolk, NE, to where Pluto lay, 238 miles from there. Yes, the Sioneva had to complete the Solar System Challenge cache series! (ref: GC15YAM Solar System Challenge) I'd found all of them except Pluto, which turned out to be in Eli, NE.

 

Let me tell you about Eli. ... That's Eli. There were three buildings, and one cache. What a weird place to find a planet, but hey, I didn't put it there. Pluto always was a weird planet anyway... if it even is a planet, officially, anymore. But I was very happy to find it, anyway!

 

And then we moved on... there was another place I wanted to get to. (catsnfish, it's all your fault!)

 

"Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about, and valiantly, he chickened out.

Bravely taking to his feet, he beat a very brave retreat. A brave retreat by brave Sir Robin."

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

 

Out past Crawford, NE, lies the Toadstool Geologic Park. Having heard so much about the strange formations at the place - from certain people - I wanted to check it out, since it was more or less on the way to Hot Springs, where we meant to stay the night. Beautiful, desolate terrain, beautiful, desolate clay road, beautiful, desolate storm cloud - er, Dad, wait a minute, that cloud looks like it has company. And it's getting bigger. And fatter. And darker. And this road is VERY desolate, and it looks like it'll be mud in about 5 minutes. And my little hondacar is... a little hondacar.

 

So, we decided to turn around before actually getting to the park. We're still patting ourselves on the back for that, too - we could see that cloud letting loose to the west of us, just after we got back to the highway. However! We also had storms letting loose to the east - and well, how often have you seen a double rainbow? Here's what WE saw!

 

Now, that was a good omen! So we continued on, entering South Dakota from the south. My father is native to South Dakota, but he'd never come in from this direction or along this road before, so we both enjoyed the novelty of seeing this:

 

 

It rained that night. It rained a lot. But I'd upgraded to a nice little KOA cabin instead of pulling out the tent. We stayed dry. And everything was... say it with me... CLOSED! Yes, everything in SD seems to shut down after 5 PM. Except for the bars. Which can be a pain when you're really hungry. The geodad doesn't do bars. We finally found an open restaurant. Food was decent. The geodad and geocat enjoyed the porch swing at the cabin though, and the sunset was beautiful.

 

 

"I want a beer!"

little girl outside our cabin about 8 am

 

Pancakes and mammoths were on our menu the next morning - and more rain. But no beer, alas.

 

We'd already planned to tour some of the caves in the area, and what better day to do it then on a wet, dreary day? The geodad was doing allll the driving at this point, since it was his native place, and I was perfectly happy with that! I'm just not used to high, windy, curvy roads. Not too many of those in Nebraska after all. We swung north and headed for Wind Cave first - I absolutely loved this cave. There were so many passages, explored and unexplored, and they estimate they only have about 10% of the cave mapped out. There's a 4 hour crawling tour for just $29 that is calling my name...

 

There were also two earthcaches there. Just another reason to pay close attention to the tour guide and all the cool areas!

We went to Hill City afterwards, the self-proclaimed "Heart of the Hills". But first I found a cache or two, and sampled the wares at a nearby winery. No cheese to go with my wine... but a sudden burst of anxiety when I called Jewel Cave Visitors Center at 1:45. The last tour of the day would be at 2:30 - and we were about 35 minutes away. Soooo, while my dad drove - I've never seen him take curvy roads so fast! - I booked our ticket reservations over the phone. Ah, the wonders of modern technology! Got there with 5 minutes to spare, quick pit stop, pick up tickets, and the tour started two minutes later. That's called cutting it close!

"Seek ye out the calcite in the rough..."

Aladdin (sort of)

 

Jewel Cave was completely unlike Wind Cave... much different kinds of formations, and a different method of being formed, if I remember correctly. It was very bumpy, with layers of calcite crystals clinging to the rock. The tour guide was a little bit more showy, too, but in both caves, they turned off all the lights at one point. Talk about pitch, utter dark. I literally couldn't see my own hand in front of my face! The geocat wouldn't have liked it. No light to make her eyes glow weirdly.

 

However, there was bacon:

 

And some other interesting formations:

 

And there were stairs. Lordy, but there were lots of stairs, and slotted metal walkways over yawning gulfs below. First time in my life my fear of heights kicked in when I was several hundred feet below ground, but there's a first time for everything. But my legs hurt from all the stairs for two days afterwards - and I thought I was in such great shape, too. Guess not!

 

There were two earthcaches at this cave, too, but arriving so late, I couldn't look for the answers... so while the geodad took care of business after the tour, I buttonholed the poor rangers (who just wanted to go home) and held them at GPS-point while I rattled off arcane questions like "What is the chemical composition of calcite?" It worked at least, but they were sure looking at me funny...

 

Then it was back to Hill City, once again - you see, the geodad had spotted a trainyard there, & it was "All Aboard!" So he saw that, and I saw this:

 

 

"It is easier for a trailer to go through the eye of a needle..."

Matthew 10:24 (sort of)

 

The next day was a full one, too. There was so much to do and see and find! Fortunately, it was sunny and warm in the morning, because we wanted to go up Needles Highway, and cloud cover would have hidden all the needles... of course my knuckles were white from clinging to the inside door handle, but that's par for the course. Lots of hairpin turns, and breathtaking views. And Needles, of course. And... BIRCH TREES! I am particularly fond of birches, and they just don't grow in Nebraska, except in the very north-central parts!

And up near the top, there was a wide pull-over, with room for many cars. We stopped to take in the view, and take many pictures... but I was also absolutely riveted with watching a car towing a trailer try to make it through a very tight tunnel we had just come through. I was making bets with others watching whether it would make it, or get hopelessly stuck in the tunnel. This has happened before, apparently. It did eventually wiggle through, but had to retract it's mirrors, or lose 'em.

 

It was clouding up again, but didn't start raining until we were out of the Needles and near to our next stop - Rushmore Cave. And pretty soon we were underground, so once again, we could pat ourselves on the back for good timing.

 

Rushmore Cave was the most "solid" of all three caves we visited. It reminded me the most of a mine, too. We ended up getting a private tour, since we were the only two there for that particular tour time. Very cool, we got to take it at our own pace and ask lots of questions. All three caves were very different; this was my second-favorite, after Wind Cave. Rushmore had teeth. And a pig. And weird, warty-looking stalagmites (or was it stalactites that hang from the ceiling? Whichever!) And pizza-crust rocks. Bubble, bubble...

No earthcaches here, but apparently there had been quite a lightning storm while we were underground. It was still pouring very hard as we headed for Mt. Rushmore, and I didn't go after any caches.

 

"What lies in the shadow of the statue?"

LOST, Season 5

 

"I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me."

North by Northwest

 

When I was last at Mt. Rushmore, I was 10 years old. I don't remember too much of it, so this felt like a "first time" thing. But first... there was the RAIN to deal with. We retreated into the restaurant at the foot of the mountain to eat our obligatory bison burgers, while these four stone statues kept watch over us. Not bad! But didn't see Eva Marie Saint or Cary Grant come running through, more's the pity... Eventually, the rain let up, and we ventured outside - they've built a walkway that goes around right up to the bottom, so you can get really up close and personal - neither of us had been on it before. Very cool!

 

Oh - Nicholas Cage was a no-show as well. Actors. Sheesh. But here WE are - and I just liked the angle on this one, too.

 

 

"We're going to knock your Wall down."

"By walking around in circles?"

"Yes."

Veggie Tales

 

I know this is getting really long, but we have one more day to get through. So just bear with me - or not! Our next stop was to be a campground in Wall, SD, that night, but when we pulled in, we didn't like the look of it. So we found a nice, pretty inexpensive motel instead. The tent never left the car at all this trip, it must have been very angry! Most of the stores were - you know it - CLOSED - when we got there, but we still did a bit of windowshopping. And now it's time to just let the pictures speak for themselves, for a moment.

In a really weird coincidence, while I was shopping for T-shirts, in strolls a caching family from my hometown that I'd met several times before at events. They spotted us through the window and just came in to say hi. We had a good laugh over it, before heading on our separate ways again.

 

We'd originally planned to spend one more night camping, but it was about 11:30 when we left Wall, to head down through the Badlands. We talked it over and decided to make the 450 mile push for home, instead of staying out another night. But first, we DID get to drive through the Badlands, and my camera was busy, clickclickclick. Also picked up two or three earthcaches here - are you noticing a trend? I didn't get many traditional caches, but I got at least 8 earthcaches... and there were so many I didn't get. The Hills were alive with the sound of earthcaches!

 

A few randomly selected shots of the Badlands, before I close this out. I've still got to get out and cache today, you know...

 

         

         

 

(If you think the last picture was part of the Badlands, I obviously made this Chronicle far too long. Just testing you! It's actually Smith Falls State Park outside Valentine, NE. We passed by on the way home.)

 

Until next Chronicle - cheers and happy caching!

 

By Sioneva

 

 

 

 A strangelet is a hypothetical object consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter. The term "strangelet" originates with E. Farhi and R. Jaffe. Strangelets have been suggested as a dark matter candidate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Comments(2):

1. story

   loved your newest adventure! we hopefully will make it up there this summer....but not the second cave! dont want to do the walking! Keep up the good stories....I love them! Vicki

   Tuesday, June 01, 2010 vicki

2. pics

   another great entertaining story with lovely pics to drool over :-) keep them coming girl :-)

   Tuesday, June 01, 2010 Ulla