Wind Cave Nat'l park & Mammoth site

Our last stops in South Dokota were the Wind Cave National Park and the

Our guide at the original cave entrance

mammoth site both near Hot springs. The wind cave was discovered by

brothers in 1881,  who heard wind blowing out of a small hole in the

side of a mountain. We took the natural entrance tour inside the cave

and saw lots of boxwork. It was hard to take pictures in the cave since

of course there was very little lighting but we did our best. The cave

tour was a great new experience for us both.

After the cave

tour we headed a bit south to the mammoth site. The history of this

site goes back 26,000 years. A large colony of olumbian and woolly

Boxwork

mammoths were trapped and died in a spring-fed pond

near what is now the southwest edge of Hot Springs, South Dakota.

Discovered by chance in 1974 while excavating for a housing development

the Mammoth Site is the world's largest Columbian mammoth exhibit and

research

center for Pleistocene studies. As a child I loved dinosaurs and

anything similar. This was an amazing thing to see all of these fossils

in one place still being excavated.

inside cave

crystals

mammoth site

more boxwork

mammoth skull

mammoth

me next to a mammoth

ancient bear