We were up early in Hot Springs, South Dakota and finally showered! We were off to Jewel Cave (not to be confused with Wind Cave, the National Park we visited yesterday) in northwest South Dakota. This National Monument is buried beneath the Black Hills; within 3.3 square miles, it covers 165+ miles of caves (they just discovered a few more miles last month) and is the second largest in the world, only smaller than Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. The passages are several layers deep and we were able to go about 250 feet below the surface to see some of the amazing crystals this cave is named for. It was so cold down there and even though Deven was afraid of bats, she quickly relaxed when our park ranger told us we were too deep for bats to survive (although this cave is home to 7 different types of bats). After learning a little bit about how the crystals formed and the exploration of this cave, we were back in the car and off on a 350 mile drive. We drove out of South Dakota and back into Wyoming, going hours without seeing anything other than open grasslands. The first town we came to had a sign that said Population 1! I was praying we didn’t have car trouble in this middle-of-nowhere highway and we finally made it to southern Wyoming where we started seeing signs of life again. We were in desperate need of Starbucks because we hadn’t seen one since Idaho more than a week ago! I found 5 Starbucks in Cheyenne thanks to bing.com and we eagerly awaited the lattes that were only about 100 miles away. We drove through downtown Cheyenne (which was very crowded due to a big rodeo that was going on) and stopped at Starbucks. Ahhh….we were rejuvenated and ready for the rest of our drive. We left Wyoming and entered Colorado en route to Rocky Mountain National Park. We made our way through the mountains as the sun was setting and we started realizing it was probably too late to get a site in the park on a Saturday night. We rolled into Estes Park (just east of RMNP) and it was packed! Estes Park is definitely a weekend destination for many people, as the streets were full of people coming and going to dinner, bars, and family-friendly areas. Every sign said NO VACANCY. We were tired after a long day of driving and pulled into a place just outside of the park that said no vacancy. Thankfully, one spot had just opened up and we had a place to sleep for the night. After a long, boring drive we called it a night just about a mile outside of Rocky Mountain National Park.
