Vandrea Does America: Day 62 (Tuesday 8/21/12)- Gillette, WY + Custer, SD + Chadron, NE

Three states in one day? Yep, that's what kind of day it was. We started out early and easily made the fairly short drive from Wyoming to South Dakota. Other than much higher gas pices it can be hard to tell where Wyoming ends and South Dakota begins.

Wind Cave has a sister cave nearby. Due to school picking back up in many states we practically had the tour to ourselves, with just one other couple from Germany along with us. The lovely couple from Dusseldorf bragged about how they get 30 days of vacation leave every year. (Seriously someone should get on this immediately. We're losing our world dominance on slacking. We can enact 2 months of vacation time for every American. We can call it the "waste of space race").

Even though the caves are relatively close to one another and some scientists believe they may one day find a connection between the two (both caves, despite being huge are still mostly uncharted) each is completely different from the other. Wind Cave had so much to see we were glad to take the well lit tour and get a good perspective on all it's cool formations. We felt though that taking the lantern tour was the best way to experience Jewel Cave.

Holding an oil lantern for almost two hours is a bit of a challenge, especially, as we were to find out, when you have to crawl on your hands and knees, but it provided much of the thrill of our descent. Since it was a small group with limited lighting we got to meet a few bats. Our tour guide was a 13 year veteran of the cave and had a wealth of knowledge and was, in addition, an amature philosopher and senitmental storyteller. Amanda cried. Though she also hit her head a few times. Hard to say.

This brings up a stark contrast between the two caves-safety. The first tour guide stressed again and again the importance of using hand rails and being very careful even though its path was a relative cake walk. Even so around every turn half the group would yell in warning "stairs" or "wet" or "low ceiling." In Jewel Cave we each took a turn racking our heads against cave rock and both gentlemen took (graceful) tumbles. It's stair passageways were so cramped, long, and steep it felt like we were climbing into a nightmare Escher world.

Speaking of nightmares, next was lights out. Though I learned I have poor suction or blowing powers (thats what she said...Wait, does that work when it's your girlfriend?) and despite a dozen attempts could not blow out my latern. Since a bat had been hovering the moment before we extingusihed our lights the total darkness was frightening.

After all this we had seen merely a fraction of the 2nd longest cave in the world. Jewel Cave is 162 miles long (and counting). We next headed out for what will someday be the world's largest monument.

An assistant to the sculptor of Mount Rushmore began his own project in the region with a goal of dwarfing the predesesor in every conceivable way. (Though only containing the presidents' heads, Rushmore also depicts a giant middle finger to the Native Americans to whom the land on which Rushmore is carved is sacred and was promised to them). One way it bested Rushmore is in length. Sadly the sculptor died in 1982 decades into his project. Now his entire family, 10 kids in all, (this guy can't do anything small) is continuing his efforts. And this is some effort (he reminded me of a mountain man Marlon Brando). For several years the sculptor did all the mountain blasting himself. In over 50 years of work on this massive scultpure of Native hero Crazy Horse just a small fraction is complete (his head) but even a fraction shows up Rushmore (the 4 presidents could fit like oversized hair clips in Crazy Horse's long locks) and it does seem that production has picked up as funding has become more consistent. The final way the monument shows up Rushmore is in price ($10 each). Though they need it and is good to know the money goes towards the project which honors the Native tribes all over the U.S. but also that 50 years from now we can again visit and see where they are at in completing what will be the world's largest scultpure.

Allowing a detour to fulfill my whim to visit the Cosmos, Isaiah waited in the van while I saw magic. Now skeptics might have to turn off their brain to enjoy the show, but this tour was crazy. For a mere $9.50 you can tour the Cosmos. Several demonstrations show off its weirdness. I witnessed water rolling uphill, children doing matrix style back bends and before the eyes of a large crowd I shrank, becoming shorter than another participant that I had dwarfed moments before, all on level ground! I have no idea how this came to be, but they claim it's a vortex of some kind. I would lean more towards a crazy near anti-gravity area, but can't say with any certainty.

When my head stopped spinning we again crossed into another state. This time back to Nebraska to spend the night.