So on to Day 2 of our trip. Keegan woke up at 6am hungry so we gave him a bottle. We convinced him to go back to sleep. Lyle and I got up around 8:30am; Cate and Chris got up around the same time. Lyle and I spent a little time playing the Wii while we waited for Keegan to wake up. By 9am Keegan was awake again. We all piled into the car and headed into Hill City to get something for breakfast. We found a coffee shop in Hill City; thank goodness for small blessings. Keegan was strapped into his stroller and we went over to get breakfast. The coffee shop was also the town's office supply store, copy center, book store, and Harry Potter merchandise store. It was interesting, I guess you need to have your fingers in a lot of pies to make it as a business in such a small town. I got a Cafe Mocha Latte and a bagel with cream cheese. We sat outside the shop in the sun and ate breakfast; while plotting out the events we would undertake for the day. Keegan was content in his stroller for a few minutes and then I had to get up and walk him in circles to keep him happy.
Cate and I poured over the map and it was decided that we were closest to the Crazy Horse memorial so we would go there first. Crazy Horse was on the way to Jewel Caves so we would go there second. Then we planned on driving through Custer State Park on our way out to Mount Rushmore. The drive to Crazy Horse was nice; the black hills are very pretty. We had all heard that paying to get into the Crazy Horse monument was silly so we were looking for a place to see it from the road. Fat chance of that; we ended up down a one way road at a ticket booth and payed $25 for the car to get into the memorial area. Keegan had fallen asleep on the way there; and being we were going through the caves next Lyle and I were reluctant to wake him. We took pictures of the memorial from the car and then I offered to stay in the car with Keegan while the others went into the Crazy Horse Museum.
I wasn't feeling great; I still had a cold from earlier in the week and was more than happy to sit out in the car and wait. Lyle, Cate, and Chris came back from the museum maybe 10 minutes after they had gone in. There was a lot of mumbling about how I really hadn't missed much and how lame it was to have paid anything to see that. For an additional $4 a person we could have taken a bus up to the memorial but that seemed really lame considering we had paid $25 to get in there in the first place. Grumbling about what a lame stop this was we got back into the car and took off for Jewel Caves.
Of course Keegan woke up as soon as we left the Crazy Horse memorial parking lot. Then as we started moving again he promptly went back to sleep. On the way to Jewel Caves we passed a lot of forest where the pine trees had no needles and were just dark sticks of wood sticking up from the ground. We found out later that a fire had gone through the area in 2004 destroying much of the forest in that region.
We got to Jewel Caves 30 minutes before the next tour. So Lyle and I brought in Keegan's bottle and we tried to get him to eat some formula. There was a little room where we could watch a video. Cate and I sat down to watch the video while I fed Keegan. Lyle and Chris disappeared; a short time later they reappeared with pictures of themselves trying to get through the example 7.5 inch crawl space that you needed to be able to make it through to take the spelunking cave tour. After Keegan was done eating he crawled around under the chairs in front of the video screen. There was really no one there and the floor looked reasonably clean; since he was going to be strapped in his backpack for the next hour and a half I figured there was no harm in him getting rid of all that energy.
We had to run back to the car to divest ourselves of all bags and other items. We were only allowed to bring in cameras and the baby backpack. The cave tour started with a long elevator ride down. Keegan enjoyed this immensely and kept shouting out and giggling with joy. Jewel caves was immense; bigger than any caves I had been in before. There were over 700 steps we had to take up and down. All of the steps were made of aluminum that was kind of slippery in the dampness of the cave; the rails were also aluminum and were wet to the touch. The steepness of the stairs made me nervous. I was trying to make sure and let Lyle know when he needed to duck so he wouldn't whack Keegan's head on the cave ceiling. All of the catwalks and steep staircases went over very deep crevices and chasms in the cave. I do not like heights. I was also on cold medicine and that was making me a little dizzy. I fought vertigo the whole time we were in that cave. The openess of the cave and the height of the stairs were horrible. I was constantly scared that Lyle would slip (which of course he didn't). And everytime Lyle turned to talk to me with Keegan and the backpack hanging out over the rail over a chasm I almost had a stroke. I know Keegan was strapped into the backpack but I keep having this vision of him falling down, down, down....
I figured I was the only neurotic one of the group. Thankfully I wasn't. As we crossed one particularly long catwalk over a particularly deep chasm, Cate murmured something to the effect of; wow wasn't this just great taking this little aluminum catwalk over a large height, she didn't like heights and she also didn't find the wet slippery handrails particularly reassuring. It made me happy that I wasn't the only one finding this cave walk a little intimidating. By the end of it all I was just happy to get out of there. Keegan was very good throughout the tour. He would start "talking" whenever we stopped moving though. Lyle had to keep walking in circles to keep Keegan calm. Keegan wasn't upset he was just excited. At one point the tour guide asked if we had any questions and Keegan said "Booo GGaaa Gaaa Maaa" really loud. Everyone got a laugh out of that.
Well now it was almost 2pm and we still hadn't eaten lunch. We drove into the town of Custer and ate at a small restaurant there. The food was nothing special but it was good enough. I felt kind of bad that we left a ton of cheerios under the high chair. I think Keegan dropped 10x as many cheerios as he actually ate. Custer had a candy shop in it. We went to the candy shop and got some dark chocolate covered caramels and some truffles. Keegan walked around the shop with some assistance and then snuck some hard candy sticks out of a bin and tried to chew on them. I put them back and let him know he's not big enough for that yet. The owner of the shop said "well you could buy some for him to eat later"... Luckily she was just kidding and we left the shop planning to go to Custer State Park.
When we got to Custer State Park the park ranger at the entrance asked us if we had ever been there. We were like "No". So she highlighted a couple of the roads on the Custer State Park map and recommended taking the Needles Hwy Drive or the Wildlife Loop. Although she said that they had just round up the Bison on the Wildlife loop so it might be better to do that a different day. She mentioned that the Needles Hwy Drive was very nice and would take an hour or so to get through. We discussed it and looking at the map decided the lady was exaggerating and there was no way that Needles Hwy drive could take that long. So we opted to do that; we figured we could still get to Mount Rushmore.
Half an hour later we still weren't to the start of the Needles Hwy drive and we began to wonder about timing. Keegan fell asleep in the back and fitfully snored through the whole discussion. The Needles Hwy Drive was awesome but it was also very slow. With the winding road, 30 mph speed limit, and the one-way tunnels it took us much longer to progress down the road than we had initially thought. There were a couple highlights on the drive. The biggest one was the cathedral spires formation. This appeared through the trees as we crested a hill. Excitedly Chris and I told Lyle to pull over so we could take pictures. Lyle pulled off of the road and him and Chris noticed that there were some rocks you could climb up on the opposite side of the road. Him and Chris took off up the road. I started to go after them and remembered Keegan was sleeping in the back of the car. Cate saw me hesitate and told me to go on, she didn't want to climb up there and would stay with Keegan. So we climbed up the rocks it was a beautiful view. We took lots of pictures and then climbed back down.
The rock formations on needles hwy were really cool. That is until Lyle started comparing them with various parts of the male anatomy. The next highlight was Sylvan Lake. This is a beautiful Lake in the middle of all of this rock. It reminded me a lot of Lake Loise in Banff National Park. We wound around and around and finally got out of Custer State Park. It was after 5pm by the time we escaped Needles Hwy and Mount Rushmore was closed. We decided to go back to the lodge.
We stopped by the market in Hill City and got some stuff to make on the grill. Upon getting back to the lodge no one was really hungry. While I fed Keegan, Cate and Chris went out to get everyone ice cream. It was decided since no one was hungry we'd have ice cream for dinner. After Keegan was fed I gave him to Lyle to put to bed. Keegan fell asleep easily, exhausted. Cate and Chris came back without the desired ice cream because all the Dairy Queens closed at 7pm; but they managed to find an ice cream pie at the market. We sat around eating chips and ice cream pie. Then Lyle was determined to fire up the hot tub outside. We all piled into the hot tub and watched the deer grazing out in the forested area behind the lodge. Then it was time for bed.
Keegan woke us at 1am hungry again and had to eat. I struggled with a stuffy nose and cough all night. Other than those things the day had gone great and we were looking forward to the next day.
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