Posted on by admin

Wind Cave…..The Actual Cave

When in Rome…..The saying goes….Do as the Romans do.  Well, when in Wind Cave National Park, you must actually tour the park’s namesake.  We were thoroughly impressed with this cave tour.  It was much different than Howe’s Caverns back home in New York.

This was the actual entrance used in the 1800s to access the cave. It measures only 1 foot by 2 feet.
Today the wind was blowing out, notice Laurie’s hair. The cave exhales on days where the air pressure is higher on the inside of the cave and it inhales when the air pressure is higher on the outside.

We found a larger opening! For some really cool statistics about the cave depth, around 650 feet and number of miles of passageways, about 150 miles within a one square mile area of land! Visit: https://www.nps.gov/wica/learn/nature/wind-cave-natural-history.htm
These formations on the cave’s ceiling are called boxwork. They look like a post box in the lobby of a post office hence the name. They are extremely fragile so NO touching! And NO leaning or touching of the walls. They just  hand-picked over 300 pounds of lint off the walls to keep the cave pristine.
Our guide said there were 11 different exits from this particular big room in the cave. Not all of them have been explored yet.  There are still 1-2 new miles of cave mapped each year. They are always looking for people who want to become cave explorers!

Here are some cool pictures of the cave we took during our tour:

    

Our guide pointed to that small opening in one of the caves “big rooms”. She said that back in college she would  crawl up into it and go exploring. Not sure I could get through that little hole, never mind any further?

 

2 Replies to “Wind Cave…..The Actual Cave”

  2. Very interesting! I clicked the link and read up on the cave. It’s so hard to believe that caves on this scale even exist!

Comments are closed.