The Jewel Cave.. and other stuff

Following our trip to Rushmore and Crazy Horse we set up at our latest KOA camp in Custer, S.D. Our neighbor, Mark, was a biker on his way to Sturgis, for the bike rally. Sturgis has really been the elephant in the closet of this whole trip, the thing that has been showing predominanty in the background that we just haven't gotten around to discussing.

Sturgis is homed to the largest biker rally in the world. Roughly a million or so bikes converge to Sturgis during the first week in August for concerts, trading, and huge biker flea markets. It is currently in its' 68th year and really is a huge boost to the economy of many of the small towns with in a 60mile radius of Sturgis. How big and significant is the Sturgis Biker Rally you might ask?

While on the trip we have tried to get Carl a different shot glass from the different places we have visited. The place that didn't sell commemorative shot glasses, was Mount Rushmore, because they were only selling Sturgis shot glasses. Thats right, one of the most significant American monuments and they were selling Sturgis shot glasses and not their own.

The day after Rushmore we went out to the Jewel Caves for a tour of a caves. The caves were something like 26 stories below the surface of the Earth, and the temperature is 49 degees inside of them all year round. That would have been nice to know before getting to the cave in nothing but a t-shirt and shorts. I think they don't tell you before hand so you have to buy a sweatshirt from the gift store.

Interesting cave fact. The temperature of a cave will be the median temperature of ground above it. So if it is 94 in the winter and 30 in the winter the cave temperature will be 62 degrees year round.

Our guide on the tour, was a short, angry, ranger who gave quick explanations and yelled at a 5yr old for touching one of rocks in the cave. Apparently a 5yr old can break the cave and undo milions of years of formation and weathering. Here is the best picture of a cave that one can take with a cellphoneWhen we got back to camp, we were greeted by some familiar faces. The couple from The Wagon Wheel, who we had spent some time talking to at our last camp, had moved into the Custer camp and was a site or two away from us. Eileen and Roger... we will update later on, but wanted to get something up for now