8-4-12 Day 8 Jewell Cave & More!

Another great weather day. We left the hotel about 7:50, gassed up and took 16 south back to Jewell Cave and arrived about 9:10. The cave tour is 80 minutes and there are 741 steps so most of us brought sneakers to change into. They take you down an elevator about 300 feet and then you walk on a path of aluminum grating & stairs in between concrete walks. Pretty impressive contract it most of been to build the walkway and install the elevators. Jewell cave has currently mapped out about 162 miles of cave (and still mapping) making it the 2nd largest in the US behind Mammouth cave (over 400 miles)in KY. It is the coolest cave in the US, literally as it stays a constant 49 degrees compared to Mammouth that is 53. (One of the National Park service tour guides corny jokes)

Flow Stone formation nicknamed Jaba the Hut!

From here we kept going west on 16 to Newcastle, Wyoming and had coffee, then turned north on 85 to 585 into Sundance, WY and decided to stop for lunch. There was a Harley shop so we stopped in to ask for a recommendation and they told us to go right next door. Well it turned out to be a mistake. It wasn't that busy but somehow our section got left on ignore when they changed waitresses. The menu was very limited but interesting so we figured anything would be good. Well we finally got drinks and put our order in. People coming in after us got served thier food and we're still waiting. At the 1 hour mark I told the waitress she had 3 minutes to get the food or I was leaving. This is after she assured us several times it would be right out. About 5 minutes later 3 orders come out, mine first! The sandwich was fine but the skinon fries were cold! In a few minutes 3 more dinners come out and also had cold fries. Sue had ordered a side of fries and a few minutes later hers came out fresh & hot. At this point Anne asks what happened to her lunch, which was just a side salad, that caught the waitress off guard. I guess that was also due to the change in waitress even though she was the one that took all the food orders! Probably spent (wasted) 2 hours in this town that was most unmemorable! Left about 2:30 and headed on 90W for 1 exit to 14N to 24N and to Devil's Tower! This is quite the site. It rises 1280 feet above the adjacent river.

There are quite a few rock climbers that scale this place. The climbs average about 4 to 600 feet depending which route you take. We saw a least 10 people in process and several more preping for thier climb the next morning. Take a look at the pics of one descending and then a wide angle of him as a dot just to the right of the left tree.

From Devils Tower we headed in reverse back onto 90E and into Deadwood, SD. This town was busy as it is the only town in SD that has full gambling as everywhere else is just video machines. It is basically restaurants/bars/casinos. Walked around for a bit to say we'd been there and headed back to Rapid to get dinner. By now it was well past 9 pm so we opted to walk up the street to a nice place and had a few drinks & dinner. We got back to the hotel about 11:30 had a night cap and called it a day. Plan is to scope out Sturgis in the AM as we have passes to the Buffalo Chip for the Zac Brown show tomorrow evening.