Thursday, 8 May 2014

7 May – Rapid City / Black Hills

The weather was very overcast and drizzly so we took the opportunity to go to Jewel cave.  Its apparently one of the largest mapped cave systems in the world, some 170 odd miles and they say there is quite a lot yet to map. From measuring airflow in the cave system they estimate that they have only mapped about 5% of the system. They have almost weekly expeditions to continue the exploration process, although who would want to go crawling along their belly in tight, dirty little air-starved spaces....I know not.... certainly not me LOL. The cave is a dry cave, so not a lot of stalactites, but lots of crystal formations. The cave was underwater up to 5 times in the past and while it is full of water the crystals form. It was a bit of a workout – lots and lots of stairs. You enter the cave via a lift because there is only one known entrance in the side of a canyon.




We stopped by a wine tasting place on our way back to camp (that's more like it :)) and tasted some wines.  The winery was called Naked Wines and had a range of different wines, named all sorts of things like Cougar, Foreplay, Fifty Shades of White, Booty Call, Naked Merlot, etc etc... fairly amusing. They also had micro-brewery beer tasting (we didn't get to that... next time).

We did a bit of shopping and now are sitting back having a cheese, cracker, dip with a Canadian liqueur (Yukan Jack.....very smooth) dinner (we had a late lunch...followed by a blueberry pipe at the Purple Pie Shop (also on the way back).

The weather has turned a bit windy, overcast and really bloomin' cold so we are just going to kick back, take it easy & enjoy the good life..... indoors:)

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