Day 26 Jewel Cave and Crazy Horse

 Saturday, July 8, 2023 

Wyoming ➡️ South Dakota

This morning we got an early start of 7:04 am, driving through the flat plains of Wyoming, seeing antelope, prairie dogs,and mule deer and as only in the west, cowboys moving cattle. 

We didn't go over the Bighorn Pass because of the camper and the tunnels. We took the Scenic Byway 16, which was still over the mountain but wider roads and canyon views.  It was very pretty!

Had to stop and stretch right by these flowers... lupines! 

Yeah, I got to see some!

And some of the last views we'd have of snowcapped mountains.

Cowboy boot w/a spur cloud...

A fitting description as we're in the west.

Hundreds of train cars filled with coal. We had just passed a mine. 

A little higher with the router got him better connection... where there's a will, there's a way! 🤔 🤣

We missed the road sign.

Jewel Cave 

✔️ 99% a dry cave, therefore not many stalagmites and tites. 

✔️217 miles of explored area with possible 7000 miles yet to be discovered. 

A straw

Blue light on the formation 

Cave Bacon

This was my favourite.

Our next stop was to see Crazy Horse and we discovered it was quite a place and very interesting! It tells of their heroes and their stories. 

Perfect photo bomb 

Our evening stay and we decided to stay and relax rather than go to Mt Rushmore to see the night lighting of the faces.  We had our one and only time of mountain pies.  While I realize we missed an interesting happening, it really did feel good to stay and relax and enjoy the evening at our campsite. 

Rushmore Shadows Resort

Sunset

Antelope next door

Evening's glory

Mini golf and they had been shooting hoops

And then a fire, which we had so few of (maybe 4x) and our first and only mountain pies on this trip.

We had quite the maneuvering to get in position and then we discovered we were back a bit too far.  So the improvising on a stone worked and stayed put.