Wind Cave National Park

I'm trying to update this chronologically, with a goal of have a record of the trip that I can print for the kids to have to remember our adventure. Each time I post about a new stop I think 'oh, this was my favorite'. That's how awesome our trip has been so far. Each stop has been better than the last. 

Wind Cave National Park was no exception. 

Wind Cave borders Custer State Park in South Dakota, so we camped there for nearly a week while we visited several things on the must-do in the Black Hills list. 

The cave is the sixth largest in the world and is unique in the fact that it's a dry cave, so it instead of the stalactite and stalagmites that most caves contain it has something called box work. It's beautiful, but difficult to photograph, so Google box it if you get a chance and check out some professional pictures of it. God's handiwork is amazing. 

The cave was discovered in the 1800's when a couple of guys found a hole in the ground from which was coming a strong wind, which is where the name comes from. Our tour guide stood in front of the hole with a small piece of cloth so that we could see the wind blowing, but for the sake of preservation, no longer used as an entry point. 

My Junior Rangers

The original entrance point. The yellow cloth is blowing in the wind. 

There are a few different caves tours available and each explores a different section of the cave. We talked to the Rangers to find out which was the most reasonable with small kids and they gave us a ton of information to consider before we chose a tour. 

Box work on the cave ceiling

What John looks like in a cave

The cave was really cool and the tour guide was excellent. The highlight of the tour for me, though, was that Patton actually went on it. I know that I've talked a bit about how cautious a child P is, never wanting to contend with things that she is unsure about or put herself in a situation where the outcome cannot be determined. She has all of the childhood phobias -- heights, dark, small places, fast rides, bugs and snakes, unclear water. All of them. She has come so far this year, though, that John and I have stopped assuming that she is going to be intimidated by a situation and we deal with the phobia if it presents itself. That's what we did at Wind Cave. We just announced that we were going to take a cave tour, bought tickets, and worked it into our schedule for the day. We armed the kids with long sleeves, their Junior Ranger books, hats, and pencils, and we had a snack in the sun waiting for the tour to start. I don't think that it occurred to Patton that she was about to face some fears until we actually entered the cave, but we had not gone more than about three steps when she grabbed onto my leg and tried to push me back out the door because she was faced with the dark path that clearly headed far below ground. It took a few minutes of calming. I reminded her what she was going to see in the cave and how this was the only place she could do that, and that if she wanted to know what the cave looked like inside she was going to have to trust that the tour was safe. She calmed down after a few minutes and, I think, had the most enjoyable time of any of us. It was a victory for her, even with the relatively small amount of resistance she showed, because Patton a year ago would have gone into a cave. Watching our kids overcome fears is definitely one of the most rewarding things about parenting, so this was a great day for our family.

More of the box work that Wind Cave is famous for.

The largest "room" in the cave

Cave explorers

Wind Cave is a really small park, but the uniqueness of the cave's formation definitely earns it a spot of the Must-Do in the Black Hills List. Plus, I counted the geology lessons as science for the entire week!