Sunday, July 3, 2011
In the morning, we drove out of the Badlands. We stopped at Pinnacle Overlook, and bird watched for a few minutes. We saw a mountain blue bird, which was so pretty! He was a bright blue compared to the gray behind him. Sitting on top of a tree, he looked very majestic. He flew away, and we had to leave.
My family was heading to Wind Cave. We drove for about two hours and we finally got there. We watched a video about Wind Cave National Park. I learned that there was a guy named Alvin Macdonald who was the second man who discovered the cave, not including the Native Americans. The first brothers were the Bingham brothers. They had heard wind whistling from a small hole in the ground, and they went to investigate. So on that hot summer day, they found cool wind blowing ferociously out of a hole in the ground. The Bingham brother told other people, but didn’t worry much. Alvin put the cave in the center of his life. He explored the cave, mapping it out by hand. He crawled through tunnels and made money by giving tours. But people took samples of the rock. So they created the first national park with a cave. I was happy I got a chance to see the inside.
The largest natural entrance was small. I didn’t think we were going down there but I didn’t know where else we were going to get in. But we soon found out that we were going through an artificial door. The first thing I noticed when we got in was that it was dark. And there were lots of stairs going down. A little while later, my eyes got used to it, and I saw tunnels going through the side, and low hanging rocks. Once a couple drops of water dripped on me. I saw these yellowish-whitish bumps on the rock which looked like popcorn, which was what it was called. It was cool. When we stopped, Don, the ranger, told us to look at the ceiling. It was way cooler than popcorn! There were like box works, but you really need to see it for me to explain. It was because stronger limestone seeps through the cracks. Then the softer limestone got eroded, leaving the crack fillings. Jasmine called them spider webs and I called the really awesome.
A little while later, we had to get out because our tour was over. I was sad to have to end my cave exploring, but it was getting colder. So we took the elevator out of the cave and landed back out in the sunny, hot sidewalk again. Breathing fresh air again was nice, but seeing the cave was really exciting!
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