Black Hills 2nd course

The day dawned cloudy and cool, what a great change!  Off we headed to another cave tour, this time to Jewel Cave National Monument.  Where Wind Cave and Mammoth cave were pretty dry, ie not a lot of active cave formations, Jewel Cave (the second largest in the world behind Mammoth Cave) has some of the typical cave formations including stalagmites, stalactites, drapery, flowstone, etc.  Jewel Cave is evidently busier as we had to wait for and hour and a half to get to go on the tour so we went on a hike, and almost missed the tour, practically sprinting up the switchback hill to get back in time (well walking VERY briskly for us old folk).  After Jewel Cave we went off to check on the tourist trap known as Crazy Horse Monument.  The monument is and will be way cool, but all the crap that was at the so called visitor center was way over the top.  Crazy Horse is a private enterprise, not a national park or monument, hence all the crap.  After escaping Crazy Horse we made the short ride to Mt. Rushmore to visit the old dead dudes on the mountain.  They are still there, and still look just like they did the last several times Dan was there, but on the bright side, they were new to Kriss as she was a Mt. Rushmore virgin, and she was very impressed by its size.  From Rushmore we took the scenic road back to Custer and expanded our trip from bourbon and beer to include wine tasting. We visited Naked Winery, and although it is so named as there are no extras added to their wine like preservatives and such, they played up the theme, as we sampled wine with names such as Naked Pinot Gris, Foreplay Chardonnay, Naked Merlot, Naked Pinot Noir, Missionary Cab, and Penetration Cab and those are the tame names, don't even get us started on the Orgasmic line as Kriss will just blush (see what I did there 8).  The interesting part is that Naked Winery is actually in Hood River Oregon, and we traveled all this way to their tasting room when we have been through Hood River many times. Good wine BTW, Kriss liking the Naked Merlot best of those we tried, and Dan preffered Missionary After the wine tasting (where the cute little wine gal thanked us for "getting Naked" with her) we went out to dinner and sampled some more somewhat local beers Crow Peak Breweries Pile-o-dirt Porter out of Spearfish SD, and Brau Brothers The Ring Neck Braun Ale out of Lucan MN.  Both beers were pretty good.

day miles 86, trip miles 5,640 odometer 38,465

Deer we saw while killing time hiking waiting for the tour time.

The historic entrance to Jewel Cave (enlarged by dynamite).  Our tour did not go though this door, but took an elevator over 200 feet down to the cave.

Formation known as cave bacon on the left and some stalagmites on the right.

Drapery.

some soda straws and small stalactites.  also the calcite crystals (covered with a coating) that are found throughout the cave.

more drapery

Crazy Horse monument as it looks today.

Mt. Rushmore

Mt Rushmore seen through a road tunnel on the scenic route we took back to Custer.  Yes, they planned the road to show this view, it was a way cool road.

Everybody should get Naked.