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Wind Cave National Park

• Where is it?: – Hot Springs, SDNational Park
• Special Topics: Caves
• Recreation Activities: Auto Touring · Biking · Camping · Educational Programs · Hiking · Horseback Riding · Wildlife Viewing

Wind Cave National Park has one of the longest known caves in the world, as well as ponderosa pine forest, mixed grass prairies stretching for miles and an abundance of wildlife (prairie dogs, coyotes, mule deer, elk, bison, pronghorn – what more could you want).  Going back to the cave for a minute or two, it is not only long, but it is also pretty remarkable, with thin calcite fins which resemble honeycombs. Who knows how many more caves are hidden beneath the Black Hills of Dakota – didn’t Calamity Jane want to go back there?  Cowboys in 1881 first came across a breathing hole, and so discovery of the cave began, and explorers are still discovering new passages and rooms in Wind Cave right to this day – where will it end? Nobody knows.

Wind Cave National Park has that glorious mixture of wildlife, scenery, wilderness just begging to be hiked across, cycled on, trekked across on horseback and camped on, as well as some great educational programs where the young (and the not so young) can discover about how to preserve this vital environment and the plants and animals which live there.

No wonder Calamity Jane wanted to go back to the Black Hills of Dakota, it’s just a fantastic place to be.

Did you see the size of that donut???? The explorers can’t have eaten too many of those, to fit down those little holes.

Now that’s not something you see every day is it? Well, maybe they do at Wind Cave National Park – in the rutting season anyway.