This morning started out with some sunny skies and the promise of slightly more seasonal weather. We headed down 16A towards Custer State Park. The park and the road are the vision of South Dakota’s Govenor Norbeck who wanted the area persevered. He deserves a lot of credit – these roads are beautifully constructed (including pigtails instead of switchbacks) and the scenery is gorgeous. They even lined the tunnels up with Mt. Rushmore, so you get a view of the heads when you go through them. By the way, pigtails are where the road basically circles over itself (complete with a one lane bridge) to quickly gain elevation.
The Black Hills have a bark beetle problem. These nasty little bugs burrow into the bark and kill the lovely Ponderosa Pines. The Park Service (both state and national) are desperately trying to control the pests. One of the most effective ways to limit spread is to thin the forest. Therefore, the forests have “teepees” of dead trees.
The scenery is beautiful, minus the dead trees. The rock in the background is Mt. Rushmore.
At this overlook, Denise spotted the Yellow-Rumped Warbler (the Western form). There were robins everywhere and we even saw a nest. Red squirrels are redder, smaller cousins of grey squirrels and quite adorable, even though one caused everything in the back seat to fly onto the floor and Catherine to learn about the anti-lock break system. No one was hurt in the incident.
We stopped at several more cold (like 50 degree) overlooks all with spectacular views.
We headed up the Calvin Coolidge overlook. Coolidge spent several months of his presidency in the Black Hills and raved about the experience. Of course, the rangers wanted more money for the fledgling parks and wilderness areas so they put chicken wire upstream and downstream of his fishing holes and then stocked them with the biggest trout to be found. In any case, he provided money and there's an overlook / cell tower station / fire tower devoted to him. The view was great and included a sign with "points of interest." In the picture below, the large white mountain about 1/3 of the way from the left is the Crazy Horse Monument. Similar to Mt. Rushmore, it's a giant carving in the stone, but this time of Crazy Horse on a horse. Due to funding problems, it's been a work in progress since 1948. The face is visible with binoculars.
On the way down from the overlook, we took pictures of some of the fire damage. In 5 days in July in 1988, more than 1/3 of Custer State Park burned in a fire started by lightening. Despite 2 million dollars in suppression efforts, 4 million dollars of timber were lost. The fire went out when it rained and hailed. They aerially reseeded and the pines are coming back.
We continued towards Wind Cave, but stopped to see a few Pronghorns. Within a few seconds, Denise noted the buffalo coming out of the forest. We turned the car off (yes, we were in a pull out, not in the middle of the street) and watched the show.
The spots in the highway are the buffalo. After avoiding the buffalo jam, we were quickly stopped by a Prairie Dog Town. Yes, these critters have not lost any appeal. This time, we happened to see a funny looking one which turned out to be a 13 lined ground squirrel. He has stripes and spots and is another attractive animal.
After peeling ourselves away from the prairie dogs, we made it to Wind Cave, so named because the cave breathes to adjust to the outside air pressure. Since had a bit of time to kill before the next available tour, we went on a short hike through the prairie.
During the walk we saw Black Capped Chickadees which look remarkably similar to Carolina Chickadees but have non-overlapping ranges. We also saw some Common Nighthawks and a Dickcissel. Denise was worried about the poison ivy which Catherine thought the dark soil on the trail would make an excellent spot for a rattlesnake to warm himself.
We took the "moderately strenuous" tour involving about 450 steps down and an elevator ride up. For future reference, kids under the age of 6 or 8 should not be on a cave tour. They are bored. The cave itself didn't have as many spectacular formations as others such as Carlsbad Caverns or Crystal Cave (Sequoia). It does have a lot of boxwork. In fact 95% of the boxwork in the world is in this cave. Boxwork is like a lattice. At some point the limestone got cracks in it (possibly as granite grew threw it, but Catherine isn't sure on the details). In any case, the limestone was filled by calcite. The caves are caused by carbonic acid in water cutting through the limestone. Calcite is more resistant to the acid and remains even after the limestone is eaten away. The voids in the formation are generally about the size of your hand.
According to the ranger, the cave doesn't have enough water going through it to create stalactites/stalagmites. She also said there is a lake in the bottom of the cave that has no microbial life in it. Yet the lake slightly higher in the cave system changes depth dramatically based on surface rainfall. Catherine is skeptical that the filtering is good enough to remove all the bacteria if the water can run through the sandstone and limestone in a matter of days. The ranger also said that you can hear earthquakes but not feel them underground. Anyone know if this is true?
We left the caves and headed back towards Mt. Rushmore. On the way, we had to stop for pictures.
We hit a traffic jam caused by the begging burros. In it's infinite wisdom, the park service decided that because the burros are non-native, feeding them from your car is acceptable. Though we had no carrots, we discovered winding down one's window is inadvisable due to the rapid entry of snouts. Windows went back up and we moved along.
The burros weren't the only critters to be human acclimated. As we were reminded several times over, the wildlife are not concerned about traffic. Squirrels, Prairie Dogs, Pronghorn and Buffalo all use park roads as thoroughfares. We also saw white-tailed deer and even a pair of turkey hens with a bunch of small (softball-sized) babies. These critters were at least off the road.
We had to go back to Rushmore to see if the Mountain Goats had made an appearance. No luck today although they were supposed to have been there yesterday. But no one had seen them yesterday. In any case, we'll try again tomorrow. We did retake the obligatory shot.
Catherine then treated herself to softserve ice cream. That's sure to make her belly smaller. We headed back to the hotel for blogging and dinner. Tom would approve of the hotel -- it's just a Holiday Inn Express, but the lobby has local flare.
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