During our last visit in 2017 I had added the badlands at the last second. I was not expecting much but had really enjoyed the visit. I was a bit nervous about returning, often the second time is not as good. Regardless, I took the risk and Thursday morning we headed East to the Badlands. It is a quick trip, less than an hour and we used the West entrance.
We actually had to wait a minute at the gate as there were a few cars ahead of us. The entrance also had a prairie dog town which was quite active but I think we had seen enough dogs yesterday. Overall the park was not very busy. We had no issue finding parking and in some cases we had the less popular views to ourselves.
The park is all about rocks, rocks and colored rocks. Mostly you are seeing layers of different minerals including iron, coal, goethite, volcanic ash and manganese. We did more stops than usual at both turnouts and overlooks to see the various formations. We also took some short hikes. Some tourists seemed to be wandering off trail but we avoided that. There was one area where you could wander out over the rocky plain but it was clearly blazed with numbered trail markers.
We did not see a lot of critters but there were several bison scattered across the range. There was also one across from one of the parking lots. I was concerned with the close distance so we gave the bison a wide berth until we drove by and got a nice close view, I wsa less concerned for the car. The bison was more interested in the grass than us. He seemed mighty skinny considering winter was approaching but I believe he will be corralled and fed during the winter so hopefully he will be safe.
We completed the park in about three hours. There is much more to see and do but I did not want to repeat our dirt road adventure from 2017. That year we took one of the unpaved roads and saw some great wildlife but the rental car got so dirty I actually ran it through a gas station wash. Also, the temperatures were rising and the hikes were getting hot and less fun.
We decided to head on to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. It is small and the reviews stress the clean bathrooms which gives you an idea what people think after visiting. It does a nice job telling the history of the Cold War and the Missile Officers.
Last trip we took a command center tour that was excellent. You got to go down into a decommisioned launch control site, just like in War Games. The blast door painting was quite memorable. The Historic Site also has a replica of the blast door. For those that remember when Dominos would deliver a pizza in 30 minutes or less or it was free will understand the dark humor.
Our next stop was the South Dakota Air and Space Museum. It is a small but nice Air Force museum and it is free. Well not really, we all pay for it with our tax dollars. It has about 40 outdoor aircraft and I knew most of them, it was a nice walk. The indoor portion is small but has some nice artifacts and information. They also have an F16 flight Simulator.
They have repurposed an old F16 front that had previously been a procedures trainer into a fun sim. It is non motion and runs X-plane so it’s not super accurate. CC went first, they have a volunteer, who is a civilian pilot teach you and he talked her through departure, maneuvers, rolls and nap of the earth flight. She did a good job, he said her pilot skills showed.
I then took a quick turn. For me he did not instruct and just let me have some fun. I departed the Airforce base and buzzed KRAP which is just 4 miles away. It comes quickly at 450 knots. My low pass would have been right over the Baron if the sim knew where I parked. After my low pass, I pitched up, completed a triple victory roll and pulled hard to turn around.
I told the instructor I would return to land. They don’t normally do landings as the experience is that it ends in a crash. He gave me a VREF of 180 and it took a bit to get slowed down. Ellsworth AFB has 13,497’ of runway so I had plenty of room to stabilize and make a smooth touchdown. Score one for the Baron pilots.
On our last day in South Dakota we took it easy. I had planned both Jewel and Wind Caves which would have required leaving at 07:15. We slept in instead and canceled our Jewel cave tickets. I was also concerned that we would be caught in the Bison round up traffic. Today was the day when they round up the Bison in Custer State Park and about 20,000 people drive out to see it.
I was also watching the weather again. A few days ago our flight home was supposed to be all good weather. That had been changing and now Nebraska was potentially wet and cloudy on Saturday. I replanned to go a bit farther down to Missouri for our first gas stop. The problem was that now my reserves would be lower than I like. They would well exceed the FAA’s but I don’t believe FAA's are anywhere near enough.
Our first stop was back at the airplane. I wanted to check everything and get the extra gas. The oil was a bit lower than I expected but the plane was parked on a downhill so that may have been the difference. Not wanting to take any chances, I put a half quart in both sides so I knew I would have plenty for our return.
I also watched them add the extra gas. While we were checking everything we saw the fire engine driving around. Then the engine drove over some cones. One of the firemen was walking by so I asked if that was on purpose. He said no, that they were training a new guy how to drive by IR camera only and the cones represent people. Oops!!! You can see they had blocked out the windows in the picture. We learned he needed more practice and that we should avoid getting in front of the engine.
After the plane we headed down to Wind Cave Natural Park. Wind Cave is so named because the caves natural entrance keeps the cave's pressure in equilibrium with the surface. This entrance is a small hole about 12 inches across. This means that as the pressure swings the cave can breathe in or out up to 55 mph. This cave is the third longest in the USA and 6th in the world with 170.1 miles mapped at present. They are still exploring though.
The cave sits in about one square mile horizontally but so has been mapped to about 690 feet deep vertically. The tour only takes you down about 200 feet. The cave is like no other. It is a dry cave, no stalagmites or stalactites but it does have a unique box structure that looks like this wafers on the walls and roof.
The tour starts on the surface and is ranger lead. You walk down and down and down. The cave has an almost too perfect look. The rocks look fake in places, it was almost as if Disney made a National Park. The Ranger’s program could have been written by Disney including the G rated jokes which sometimes hit rock bottom. Like the other cave the CCC had made improvements in the 1930s so by the time we arrived we had stairs, handrails, lighting and nice floors.
This cave was much easier than Lewis and Clark. First the walk to the cave is flat and only about 200 feet. It is almost all down and the passages are much wider with the low spots not requiring ducking unless you are closer to 6 feet. The best part was after travelling down 200’, there was an elevator to take us to the surface. It actually dropped us right by our car.
I got ahead of myself though, on the drive out to the cave we saw another family of Pronghorns. We of course saw a ton of prairie dogs, not much of a surprise. We also saw several Bison with two being right up on the road. We also did two hikes.
The first was a prairie loop. It had way too much vertical for walking in a field. The park is on the line between the rolling grasslands typical of Nebraska and the limestone Black Hills of South Dakota. We were in South Dakota but Wind Cave is closer to Nebraska than Rapid City.
The prairie is deceptively serene. It looks like gentle rolling hills but the reality is the slopes are steep and hiking is much more work than it appears. I cannot imagine living out there and walking to visit my neighbors only three miles away. We tried a second hike around the Elk Mountain Campground. It reinforced that prairie hikes are sorta hard and boring and that no way will I ever camp.
The best part of the hike was the Bison we saw at the campground entrance. We watched him a bit from the car and after eating a bit he decided to sit. On the way back from the hike he had not moved and looked like he was fast asleep. Asleep or not, we stayed in the car on the road and enjoyed the view from a distance. After the hikes and caves we headed back to town to top off the car and have early dinner.
I had some more planning and decisions. My plan was to get going early though I was night current if we needed to delay or take our time. The sun and timezones would not be in our favor. I wanted to depart on our last leg during daytime but that still gave us plenty of time.
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