So Keegan followed his new found tradition of waking up at 1am to be fed and then waking up again at 6am to eat. Keegan went back to sleep right away after eating and Lyle and I were grateful. Everyone was kind of dragging a little bit this morning. Apparently we had tried to do a bit too much the previous 3 days and we were ready to take a break.
Lyle, Cate, Chris, and I were all up around 9am and then Keegan woke up around 9:30am. I fed Keegan and we all piled into the car. It was nasty outside. Probably around 50 degrees, windy, and drizzling. We had lucked out so far; all of the previous days had been absolutely beautiful. Now we were paying for it. The plan for today was to go to Wind Cave and then maybe think of something to do after that.
We stopped at a different coffee shop in Hill City. This was a very nice coffee shop, very similar to what you would find in the Twin Cities. Chris, Cate, and I went in while Lyle stayed in the car with an already sleeping Keegan. Lyle was starting to feel a bit under the weather with a cold, and I was still fighting my lovely cold. Anyway, I got a Cafe Mocha and a hot chocolate for Lyle. I also got a white chocolate raspberry scone for breakfast (yummy!). We all got back into the car with our drinks and drove to Wind Cave. We were trying to make it to the 11:30am cave tour.
We got there a little after 11am. It was a Saturday so there were quit a few more people waiting for the tour. Keegan got to crawl around the carpet for awhile and we looked at some rock samples from the cave. We toured the gift shop and found a cute kids book on how caves are formed along with a map of Wind Cave. Lyle and I decided to buy those on the way out.
When it was time to go to the cave we all piled outside and stood under a shelter to avoid the rain. It was blustery and damp and we were all kind of huddled there waiting for the guide. Finally the state park guide arrived and took us to the natural entrance of the cave, which was outside. The natural entrance was a hole about 6.5" in diameter. Wind cave gets its name from the hurricane force winds that can sometimes be found going in and out of the natural entrance. One of the little boys on the tour thought we were going down that hole and got really scared. We didn't have to shimmy down there though; good thing too the backpack would have never fit...much less my butt.
Anyway the entrance we used was an entrance that was made for excavation and tours a long time ago. They have a revolving door installed at the entrance now; after you pass through that you go past a thick wood door with iron bars in it. This used to be the old door. Apparently this old door modified climate in the cave enough that it caused a collapse in the 1950's or 60's (I can't remember exactly). Anyway they put in the revolving door to help with this.
The tour guide on this tour was awesome. He explained that they have some experiments going on with different types of lights in the cave. Apparently normal incandescent lights encourage algae growth which they don't want in the cave; they are looking at going to LEDs since they are cooler and cheaper to run.
Wind Caves was much more enclosed than Jewel Caves. You walked on the ground for the majority of the tour; which I liked. What I didn't like is that some passages are very low and enclosed...normally not a problem. Of course if you have a baby in a backpack, like Lyle did, that means you almost have to get down on your knees and crawl through some spots. I was Lyle's spotter and I stayed behind him to let him know how deep he had to duck. It's a bit of a trick to watch your own footing and try not to bump your own head while telling Lyle "okay, now down a couple inches more..."
They had told us when we bought the tickets that some of the passages were low and we would need to duck some. Unfortunately I think Lyle had to squat or crawl for 70% of the tour. Lyle definitely worked up a sweat by the end of the tour. Oddly enough Keegan slept for probably an hour of the tour. This ended up being a good thing since the passages were also very narrow. You are never supposed to touch the walls of a cave because this can damage the natural growth of a cave; it's the number one cave tour rule. Well try telling this to a 8 month old baby who keeps stretching to reach the walls from the backpack. We did pretty good in preventing Keegan from doing cave touching but he got a couple fingerprints in here and there.
It was a good tour. Wind Cave is the third largest cave in the nation. The second is Jewel Cave and the first is Mammoth Cave. Both Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, despite their enormous size, are thought to only have 5-10% of the total underground cave area mapped and excavated. After the tour we went to the gift shop to make some purchases and then got back in the car.
We didn't really have any solid plans on what to do next; so we decided to go to Rapid City for lunch and then maybe stop by the Reptile Gardens on the way back to the lodge.
We ate at a late lunch at a pretty good Mexican restaurant in Rapid City, I can't remember the name of it. Then we started talking about finding a book store. We had been joking earlier on the way from Hill City to Hot Springs that wouldn't it be awesome if all the sudden in the middle of the Black Hills there was a Barnes and Noble? Anyway, Lyle did a search on his cell phone and found out there were 3 Borders Books in the Rapid City area. We decided to forsake the rural roads and visit some good old surburbaness. We drove to the Borders and went in to peruse the books. The Borders was insanely busy and it was right next to a Best Buy.
We were having trouble downloading the pictures from the camera to the laptop. Lyle wanted to get a USB SD card reader so that we could read the SD card from the camera. So next we went to Best Buy. Cate found a CD that she had wanted and we found our USB SD card reader.
We all got back into the car. It was still miserable out and it was around 4-5pm. We decided to forgo Reptile Gardens and just go back to the lodge.
When we got back to the lodge I fed Keegan and then we let him roam around for awhile. We all started getting our stuff packed up. I was standing in the living room when a mouse ran out from under the couch to under the fridge. It startled me, Lyle and Chris who had seen it. We thought something had nibbled on the bread we had left out from the night before but couldn't decide if someone had eaten some of the bread or if something had nibbled it. Well, now we knew! Cate and I were both unhappy with this new development...we had all really liked this lodge. Chris and Lyle didn't think it was that big of a deal...after all we were in the country and this was a field mouse. Well life went on. We put Keegan to bed and resumed packing.
With almost everything packed we ate a dinner of snacks again and then went to bed.
Keegan woke up at 11pm wanting a bottle so we complied. Then we all got up at 5am and, after final packing and loading, we left by 6am.
Keegan was very crabby for the first 2 hours of the drive. He didn't want to eat, didn't want to play with any toys, he just wanted to be out of his carseat and I couldn't really blame him. Lyle and I listened to our audio book some more. We stopped at a gas station for snacks and a potty break. Keegan got to eat his solids then and when we got back into the car he was happier and fell asleep. There were a couple more pit stops on the way home but all in all Keegan was good for the remainder of the trip. It was rainy and cold the whole drive home. We finally got home around 5:30pm; Lyle and I were tired and Keegan wanted to play, play, play.
It had been a good trip overall. Although we learned that traveling with a baby is a lot of work! I was very impressed with how good Keegan was the whole time. Of course, there were times when having him there made me a bit of a nervous wreck...I was worried about his being too cold in the caves, I was worried about him not eating because he was tired and cranky, I was worried about him being too noisy at night and waking Cate and Chris up, there was just so much to worry about :-) Despite all of my worries we had fun. Though I am having second thoughts about traveling internationally with him; at least until he is off formula and baby food!
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