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Todd and Paul in front of the natural entrance to Wind Cave
This, the only entrance size hole to Wind Cave, has been clocked at blowing out at 70 mph! That is hurricane force winds! It was nice to be in a suite again. Unfortunately, Levi was up 4 times during the night and as a result, Sarah was up 4 times too. Poor Levi. He continued to be a little hot and needing extra love and help finding his sleeping friends in his bed. By morning though, he no longer felt like he had a fever. The hotel breakfast was good and we all got out of bed in time to enjoy it. After breakfast, we got back into the car to head south to Wind Cave National Park. We took the 11:30 Natural Entrance Tour of the cave. The tour was over an hour and there were over 300 stairs down into the passage ways. The boxwork formation was impressive and it was nice to escape the heat of the day by visiting the 53 degree caves. After the tour, we enjoyed our picnic lunch in a shady spot of grass outside the Visitor's Center. Then back into the car and a few more miles South to Hot Springs, SD to visit The Mammoth Site. The building had been built around a sinkhole from about 26,000 years ago. They have already discovered 55 Mammoths
in this sinkhole as well as bones from many other animals. After the tour Paul enjoyed talking to one of the young researchers. He encouraged Paul to continue his interest in paleontology and come back in about 10 years to work at the site.
After leaving The Mammoth Site we decided we needed to cool off with some Dairy Queen treats. It was over 90 degrees today. Since we were all so tired, we decided to head straight back to the hotel without traveling the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park as we had planned. We did still take the highway that goes through the park. . . And we did still see lots of wildlife. The prairie dogs were the most fun to watch as they bobbed up and down and ran from hole to hole. We also got to see a couple coyote, several deer, a couple groups of pronghorn and lots of bison. In fact, at one point the bison were in the middle of the road and we had to stop. Being spring and all, there were several calves in each group of bison as well. One little guy especially didn't think he needed to get
out of the road. Needless to say, this route was not a quick trip back to the hotel. It took nearly two hours to go less than 30 miles.
Once back at the hotel we ordered in some pizza and headed to the pool. When the pizza was delivered, we sat on the back patio of the hotel and enjoyed our pizza next to the waterfall. Then it was bath time and bedtime. We're all pooped and needing to get some rest before another big day tomorrow.
Day 10 Stats
• 1826.7 total miles driven
• 69.9 total gallons of gasoline consumed
• Average 26.1 MPG
• 38 hours, 54 minutes in the car
• 3 additional state license plates
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Tot: 0.087s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0482s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb