6/24 - Wind Cave National Park and buffalo

We headed off to Wind Cave National Park this morning with several routes to choose from.  At the last minute we decided to go via Custer State Park’s Wildlife Loop.  This is the same road we took on Wednesday when we saw only one small buffalo herd some distance away.  Today, probably because we were there earlier, we saw masses of buffalo, pronghorn antelope, deer, turkey, prairie dogs and one lone coyote.  It’s hard to tell the number of buffalo in a group but we saw so many groups I’d guess there were hundreds.

The first group was close to the road and they were mostly in the shade. The babies are quite orange next to the adults.  Their color doesn’t change to brown until they’re around 2 ½ months old.  It was very hot so we figured they’d all be heading for shade today.  Wrong.  They really don’t seem to care whether they’re in shade or sun. 

People are supposed to stay a minimum of 75 feet from these dangerous and unpredictable animals, but several nitwit tourists walked right up to this fence to take pictures.  The fence ends at the road about 20 feet to the left and there’s nothing to stop the buffalo from changing sides or even knocking the fence down if they want.  (They can jump a 5-foot fence.)  Fortunately nothing spooked the buffalo so no harm was done but a few days ago a tourist was gored by a buffalo in Yellowstone so it does happen.  No one has been gored here (yet) but a couple of tourists were treed by buffalo at Wind Cave.  The ranger told me if you’re going to get too close to a buffalo make sure there’s a tree really close by.  They can run 35 mph so a human can’t outrun them, but they don’t climb trees.  :-D

This big boy walked right by the truck.  On Wednesday a D.O.T. worker told us someone recently honked at a buffalo and got charged.  Having your vehicle rammed by a 2000 lb animal with a head like an anvil would do some serious damage.  Their skulls are extremely thick and they’re accustomed to ramming each other to decide who wins bragging rights, so it probably wouldn’t bother a buffalo a bit to take on a vehicle.  They have very strong neck and shoulder muscles, enabling them to swing their heads from side to side to clear snow over foraging patches in winter.

Two bulls were taking dust baths in (or on?) a prairie dog town.  They roll in the dirt to remove last year’s coat, get rid of insect pests and probably just because they like it. There are several birds in the foreground, two of whom are pecking on a buffalo chip.  These birds ride on the backs of the buffalo, eating insects they find in the animals’ coats.  There were masses of prairie dog towns along the road so the buffalo have lots of dirt to roll in.

We had several episodes of buffalo crossing the road in front of us.  This time they were crossing behind us, too.  They don’t seem to care anything about the vehicles.  I read somewhere that vehicles don’t register in most animals’ awareness.  If the object doesn’t have legs it doesn’t present a threat and is ignored. 

Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park adjoin one another.  They both have bison herds…..1300 at Custer and 350 at Wind Cave.  I was wondering how they knew which bison belonged where, then found out there’s a fence along the border.  A ranger told us groups from each herd were hanging out close together this week with the fence in between them, miles from any road so no tourists were able to see them.  We really got lucky today.

Wind Cave is one of the oldest parks in the national park system, dating back to 1903 which was 13 years before there was a park service to manage it.  The cave has only one known opening to the outside world.  There is always wind either blowing out of it or being sucked back in, depending on the difference in barometric pressure between inside and out.  The cave’s existence was known to Indian tribes but there’s no evidence anyone ever entered it.  The Lakota Sioux considered it sacred, believing it was the place from which the spirits of both Lakota and buffalo emerged from the underworld.

This is the one and only natural opening.  Can you imagine squeezing into that hole to explore miles of underground tunnels using only a candle and a length of string to find your way back out?

The 17-year-old son of a local mine manager discovered the cave in 1881.  He spent the next three years exploring it, declaring at one point he would never get to the end.  He would have explored a lot more of it but, unfortunately, he died at age 20 of typhoid. 

So far 145 miles of tunnels and caverns have been explored and mapped.  By the volume of air moving in and out, it’s estimated that this is only 10% of what’s there.  Exploring is still going on but it’s all being done by highly qualified volunteers, not by any government agency.  One of the most interesting facts about it is that all these miles of cave are under just one square mile of surface.  There’s about 650 feet between the surface and the water table and all those tunnels are within that space.  There are probably tunnels under the water table, too, but those aren’t likely to ever be explored. 

This is the only interior picture worth showing.  It’s a difficult cave to photograph…..too dark without flash, but flash pictures aren’t good either.  This picture is of a type of formation called boxwork, so named because it looks sort of like the boxes that were used in old post offices.  It’s made up of very fragile calcite sheets.  95% of the world’s known boxwork formations are in Wind Cave. 

Our cave-tour ranger said the thing that makes this national park different is that it’s two parks in one……the cave below and the prairie above.  It’s an interesting cave but not nearly as spectacular as either Carlsbad or Mammoth.  The buffalo are more spectacular than anything else!

We came home via Hot Springs which was 104 degrees when we went through it.  Interesting looking little town but it was too hot to stop and walk around.  When we got back to the campground it was 102 degrees.  Yuck.  It’s been a long time since we’ve been in heat like this.  It’s very dry heat so feels more like an oven than a sauna (like Florida). 

One other great thing today…….we got 19.5 mpg on our 150 mile drive.  It wasn’t all highway driving either because we were going slow around the Wildlife Loop with frequent stopping for buffalo-viewing.  Not bad!