Jewel Cave National Monument

With our arrival into South Dakota happening a bit earlier than expected, we had a day of freedom to explore before settling into our work week. It has been a while since I went underground, so why not eh? Jewel Cave National Monument (my 76th National Park visited since starting this life in 2010) was right down the road so we drove down there to get into a tour, along with hundreds of others who had the same idea. Our tour still had 2 hours before departure, which turned out to be a good thing since Kerri forgot a sweater and it was 49 degrees underground. After a quick run back to camp and a small bit of scouting around for a spot to camp in the forest after the work week, we ended up back at the Monument to start our cave tour… by entering an elevator that dropped us 240 feet below the Visitor’s Center.

The tour lasted 1 hour 20 minutes, and yes it was pretty cool (temperature) down there.  Unfortunately, the Rangers I’ve gotten in the past for some of these tours were a bit awkwardly geeky. The Ranger we had this day was quite informative, and not overly goober. He had history to share and a few stories, otherwise leaving things pretty factual… just how I like it.

The entire area that we toured had aluminum catwalks that dropped us down near 350 feet below the surface before we had to climb back up the stairs to rejoin the elevator shaft. All in all, while not as pristine as Lehman Cave in Great Basin National Park (my first cave adventure) or as huge as Carlsbad Caverns, Jewel Cave was still fun to see. Not that I would pass up on a National Park anyway.