Caves, Springs and a Mike-less Evening

Custer, Wind Cave Hot Springs

Custer is a cute little town at the edge of Custer State Park where we spent an evening listening to the strangest outdoor show called The Magic Banjo, all about a banjo that conjures up folks from the past.  Well, the banjo player wasn’t great, the 1881 folks were quite corny and the whole thing was delightful.

The next day we took a tour of Wind Cave, a limestone cave with over 129 miles(and counting) of tunnels.  Since it is a dry cave, created from standing water dissolving the limestone, not dripping through there were none of the usual cave formations.  No stalagtites or mites, but boxwood (which look like lace or honeycombs) and popcorn.  And the entrance was a small opening no bigger than the ranger’s hat.  This caused wind to pour out as the pressure between the inside and outside changed.  Hence the name of the cave.  Luckily, there was a man-made entrance that we could walk through and an elevator that we could ride back up to the surface after our 200 feet descent.

Wind Cave National park is also the location of the re-instatement of the buffalo herds.  After all but 300 buffalo were killed by the end of the 19^th century, our government, in its wisdom, decided to import buffalo from the Bronx Zoo and Yellowstone to put them all back.  Is there logic to this?  Well, they are now doing so well that the park is now exporting them back to various zoos.  What is going on?  They are, however, all over the place, roads, hillsides and meadows.  In addition, the place is crawling with prairie dogs and their towns and prong horned antelopes that were also introduced to the park years ago.  In addition to rattle snakes, this is quite the wildlife place.

We had lunch in the town of Hot Springs.  We then spent part of the afternoon looking for the heat.  We found a luke-warm river, which after some questioning, realized was as good as it was going to get.  Apparently, according to the local music store owner from Connecticut, there is a hot springs in a stream, and a cold spring in another stream that combine to make this warm river.  Hence the name of the town, Hot Spring.  Go figure.

The rest of the day was spent with me holding my cell phone in various places in the car while David drove all over creation looking for reception.  Quite exciting, only to be matched by the 15 minutes we spent at a lovely lake beach before lightning and thunder drove us to Celeste where we sat out a hailstorm and rain.  This was actually very exciting since it was the first rain since May 19.

The next day we went on one of the best hikes we have taken through a prairie in CusterState Park.  Great hike because everything was green, not red and dusty, a good length and crossing a brook at three points.  Quite lovely.

Then into a great lake for a swim, back to our camp for a quick change and then back into Hot Springs for dinner and an open mike evening at a coffee bar.  Dinner was great:  Indian taco from me(I have been looking for one) which i fry bread with taco stuff on top; and a buffalo steak for David to fulfill his bison craving.  Then to the open mike evening.  However, it was an open "mike-less" evening.  Two guitar players alternating sets with the 5 year old daughter of one of them who told jokes.  Except that we couldn't hear anything since there was no microphone!  Pretty strange.  So, back home we went through another of the famous Black Hill storms.