Jewel Cave National Park

While we were in South Dakota, we took the opportunity to visit Jewel Cave National Park. It is the 2nd longest cave in the world and is still being explored. It is still a live cave and is one of the few caves in the Black Hills that I hadn't visited.  We got to go with Grandpa Manning and Aunt Tabitha and it is a beautiful cave.  Most definitely my favorite of the Black Hills caves now.  We had a great experience, except when we got smack dab in the middle of the cave, Caleb informed us that he had to go potty.  We still had about 45 minutes of the tour left and obviously no restrooms.  We did pass one garbage can that was almost used and I was contemplating how much my clothing and Caleb's clothing could absorb if we became desperate.   We had to make sure we left no human trace in the cave and so I was glad we didn't have to try either option and the poor little guy made it.  He was almost in tears by the end but he did it!!!  We survived Jewel Cave!

The cave is of course dark but I tortured everyone with a picture down there anyways.

Our Nice Cave Family Photo!

Some pretty nice cave formation photos.  I was really impressed with our camera down there.

This is a really cool straw stalagmite.

Some more fun pictures of inside the cave.

We went up and down a lot of stairs.  Caleb was a trooper.

This formation is actually called "The Bacon Strip"  You can kind of see it but in real life it really does look like a strip of bacon on the the wall.  Look right in the middle at the reddish colored strips.

We love nature and caves are such a rare thing to see.  I am always amazed at the beauty of the Earth God has created for us and how diverse it all is.