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Welcome to my travel blog! I'll share adventures I've had, some I'd love to have, and some I'm writing about in my first murder mystery, The Body at Battle Mountain. The idea for the book sprang from a trip with my sister, towing her 30-foot travel trailer across several states. Luckily, we didn't find any dead bodies! My most recent adventure was a month-long USA road trip with my husband, so let's start with the joys and frustrations of the road.

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Saturday, May 19, 2012

The Black Hills -- Part 2
Needle's Eye and Wind Cave

Day 9: Lucky for us, the fog lifted and the next day was bright and sunny. We made our way from Custer to Needles Highway (SD-87) to view the tall granite "needles" and beautiful pine forest the area is famous for.







Along this 14-mile stretch, you will find the Needle's Eye , a massive spire that looks like the threading end of a needle. Quite impressive. We parked, and I wandered around trying to get a good picture, but couldn't get far enough away to frame more than the top.

Across the road, we drove through this short tunnel hewn through the stone. With the car in front of us blocking our view of the opening on the other end, it looks like the entrance to the Paths of the Dead in LOTR. But I got the pic when we were inside.


Views on the other side were fantastic! Greg was very tolerant of my yelling "stop" every fifteen feet, so I could take a picture. This was one place where we didn't hurry.



The sunshine was great, but I was ready to go back underground. Next stop, Wind Cave. Finally, a chance to explore underground tunnels and get more ideas for the cave scenes in my mystery, The Body at Battle Mountain. Here I am all ready to go.

Our Ranger near the cave's natural opening. Wind blows in or out of the hole, depending on the atmospheric pressure inside compared to outside. Its discovery was recorded in 1881. Can you imagine squeezing through a 10x14-inch hole in the ground and dropping into the unknown with only a candle? Yikes!

Small opening to another tunnel
Wind cave has the most complex 3-D structure of any cave in the world, with several layers of tunnels, one above the other. Exploration is ongoing, and our guide told us how an explorer can tell if he/she can fit through a tight opening: one open hand for chest depth (tip of thumb to tip of little finger with fingers spread), two hands for shoulder width. Can't imagine Beebee or Connie, the traveling sisters in my mystery, trying to squeeze through something like this!

Almost all of the world's boxwork is found in Wind Cave. Over centuries, water seeped into the cracks in the rock and left calcite deposits. The rock around the filled-in cracks then dissolved away, leaving only the mold of the thin cracks behind. Here are two pictures of boxwork (with flash and with cave lighting).


A formation called "popcorn"
 
A dark tunnel shooting off the main path--
like the one Connie blindly dashes off into!

Thank goodness for cave lighting


Back in the sunshine, above the cave is the largest mixed-grass prairie in the US, home to lots of wildlife, including a herd of bison. Here is one of the local residents.


We'll see a lot more of these guys next Saturday when we travel through Custer State Park on the way to Mount Rushmore. Join us again. We'd love to take you along!

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