Day 12: Destination Rapid City!

My morning in Mobridge, South Dakota consisted of the snooze button, conversation about the night before, and a hearty Burger King breakfast.  I didn’t get much sleep the night before because some of my roommates had knocked on my door in the middle of the night trying to make me angry.  They stayed around the hotel bar a while longer than I had, so they were a little bit rowdy.  Additionally, there was an overwhelming stench of pot in the hotel… the smell just billowed into my room.  No worries, none of our group members smoke pot… but someone sure was!  Just another event to add to the excitement of the evening.

Anyway, we left our hotel for a leisurely drive to the western part of the state.  There wouldn’t be any weather for us to chase today, so we traveled to be in a better position tomorrow in case things fired up along the Western Plains. We hit Rapid City around mid-afternoon.   I’ve never been to the Black Hills, and I’ll admit the terrain change was nice.  After being in rolling plains for the past two weeks, we entered an area filled with steep hills and pine trees.

We saw some fire damage as we got into the area.

I’ve always heard about forest fires on the news, but I never actually paid attention.  So seeing areas of cleared trees really took me by surprise: I didn’t know what had happened!  Plus, I have no idea how long it takes for areas like this to rejuvenate… The fire could have been from a few years ago, for all I know!

Since we had time, we visited Jewel Cave National Monument.  I had never heard of it before, but apparently it’s the 2^nd longest cave in the world.  The longest is Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

Teri, Me, Lindsey.

I had gone spelunking when I was in 6^th grade, so I knew that caves can really play upon my claustrophobia.  Thankfully this was a walking tour, filled with concrete walkways and metal staircases, so it wasn’t so bad.

There were also dim lights throughout the cave, so we didn’t have to bring a flashlight or anything.  At one point our guide turned down all the lights and we experienced pitch black in the cave – something I don’t think I’ve ever fully experienced before.  Pitch black, underground, silence.  My eyes couldn’t comprehend it… I kept seeing light-shadows like my brain was trying to pick up on something that wasn’t there. 

The cave was gorgeous, though I gave up trying to take pictures because my camera doesn’t give justice to the beauty of those dark caves.  I did get a couple of good pictures though.

These rocks kind of remind me of mammatus clouds...

I wish I could somehow capture depth in this picture... it was so beautiful!

That hike was pretty exhausting though.  The guide said we had walked 750 steps just on stairwells alone… the walk was about  ½ a mile.

After the cave we had dinner at an awesome local steakhouse called the Dark Horse.  I had my first buffalo burger there… and some nice happy hour beers.  Such a perfect meal after a long hike up and down that cave.  We stopped at a go-cart place and had some fun there.  It was a nice evening not being in the car for obnoxious periods of time.

Tomorrow we might be chasing in Montana.  Guess we’ll have to see what our chase leaders say in the morning.