Jewel Cave, South Dakota

At 160.02 miles (as of 9/5/2012), Jewel Cave is the second longest cave in the world, and still only 3-5% discovered. We went on the 1 hour 20 minute scenic tour (free for us under our VIP card, normally $8 per adult) and enjoyed our time.

Jewel Cave is very different than Wind Cave, with it’s large rooms (one, which we did not enter, named the Bug Duh is 570 feet long, 180 feet wide and 30 feet tall) and calcite crystals that sparkle (thus the name). Photos, as you can tell, were difficult to take due to the largeness of the rooms.

Cave Bacon ~ below.

So the VIP card we have mentioned fairly frequently in our posts is a card that gets us into many Black Hills attractions for free. VIP stands for Visitor Industry Partners and the goal is to give employees the opportunity to visit area attractions so when visitors ask a questions about where to go or what to do, we can give informed answers. One question we often get while working at the Mt. Rushmore Bookstore: “We’re short on time and can only visit one cave – which one should we go, Wind Cave or Jewel Cave?” And now we can answer it with our own experience, not just that garnered by others…..and the answer is……Wind Cave!  Why? Because if you’ve visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky or Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, or most any other cave in the US, you’ll basically see the same thing as Jewel Cave.  Wind Cave is different – it has 98% of the world’s boxwork formations, and if you can only go to one cave in the area, then that’s the one we recommend. 

Final note ~ it is suspected that someday it will be discovered that Jewel Cave and Wind Cave are connected, so then the only decision to be made is whether to call it Jewel-Wind Cave or Wind-Jewel Cave...........

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Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota

We were pretty excited to go to Wind Cave and check it out, since it’s known to have different types of formations than other caves we’ve explored. As mentioned in our previous post, we got caught in a bison jam at Custer State Park, so we didn’t get to the cave as early as planned (9am was the goal), but still got there around 10am and took the 11:20am Fairgrounds Tour. 

A bit about Wind Cave ~ discovered in 1881 by the White Settlers, used by the Native Americans prior to that as sacred ground, Wind Cave was established as a national park in 1903 ~ the first cave in the national park system. Currently Wind Cave itself is 138 miles – we say “currently” since there is still underground exploration to find new passageways. The name Wind Cave comes from the great gusts of wind coming out of the natural entrance (photo below) ~ and yes, this was the original entrance where people entered to explore the cave.

Wind Cave is known for three specific types of cave formations: popcorn, frostwork and boxwork.

 

These are the popcorn formations which is small nodes that grow in limestone caves – they look like popcorn, thus the name:

These are the frostwork formations which is needle-like growth (the darker images) that grown on top of popcorn or boxwork.

These are the boxwork formations which are thin blades of minerals on cave ceilings which intersect at various angles ~ this is the fame of Wind Cave. 

Finally, here’s a photo of the cave with no light.  :-)

We enjoyed the tour very much ~ cost of tours range from $7 - $9 per adult, but we again used our VIP card and our tour was free. Regardless, even if we had to pay, we could have gone on a Wind Cave tour. We plan to head to Jewel Cave in a couple weeks, which is a very different cave than Wind Cave, so it will be fun to compare the similarities and differences.

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