West - Day Seven - June 29, 2005

We awoke to cloudy, rainy skies this morning. We got an early start since we needed to drive all the way to Jewel Cave (about 50 miles on windy roads) to get there by 9:30 am for our cave tour. It was a good choice to be in the cave as it seemed to get rainier and rainier the farther west we went. The cave tour was awesome - very different from past cave experiences though. It's the third longest cave as of now at over 132 miles long. We mostly saw boxwork formations which are rarer and even a strip of "bacon", but few of the traditional stalactities and stalagmites. The kids did great walking up and down all the steps and standing in the pitch dark when they turned the lights out.

After the tour, we went on a short hike near the visitor's center and then..

..headed to Crazy Horse Memorial. This carving is on private property so had much more of a commercial feel. They only unveiled the face back in 1998 and have a lot of work to go. Timing for completion will depend on weather and funding. From there, we went to the hotel and settled in, went for dinner, and crashed. We were all exhausted.