Mt Rushmore and Jewel Cave

Continued from the post Mt Rushmore: "Lofty Idea, Colossal Endeavor", this is the story of my flight from KLMO to KCUT and back.

When I last wrote, I was turning in for the night. Fabulous Custer County Airport allowed camping.  The air was calm and the moon full.  It was a beautiful night, despite the 30 degree temperature.

Fast forward (although, let me tell you it didn't feel fast) 3 hours.  I had tossed and turned on a blow-up mattress trying to find a warm spot and was growing fairly tired of it.   The air mattress was cold... It was giving up all my precious body heat to the wintry ground.

Fifty feet away, the cozy FBO beckoned and shortly after 3am, I relented.  With my sleeping bag in hand, I unzipped the tent and clumsily stepped outside. Mark probably heard the sound of hiking boots running across the ramp and the closing of the door behind me!

That dark brown leather sofa had my name all over it and there I spent the next 4 hours, dead to the world.  :-)

Sunday was a much warmer day than Saturday.  Like Colorado, it appeared that South Dakota's weather could jump or plummet 30 degrees in a single day.  Gone was the icy cold wind and instead a calm, sunny day welcomed us.  Easter Bunny had visited me (I knew I had been good!) and first things first...we had a little pre-breakfast (chocolate) snack.

We found on of the only restaurants open in Custer and sat down to eat.  The food was good and hot and fast.  The cinnamon roll was to die for and big enough to share!

Jewel Cave, our next stop, was not too far away.  By 10am we had ourselves booked on a tour of the cave and were wandering around, exploring the hills and taking in the geology info that covered the walls of the visitors center.

I wished I had tucked another cinnamon roll into my backpack!

Jewel Cave:
This cave is the second longest in the world and to date, over 150 miles of cave have been explored and surveyed.  It is estimated that about 95% of the cave is yet to be found!
Luckily there are some thin, smart people willingly crawling around on their bellies, dragging their own water in (and out) of Jewel Cave, mapping more of it.

Our cave tour lasted about 90 mins.  Ranger Lydia did a wonderful job of teaching us the history of the cave as well as pointing out its unique features.  Mark and I took more pictures than the rest of the tour group put together.

Fun times!  But alas, they couldn't last all day... we had to go home.

But return from Custer without doing a fly-by of Mt Rushmore?  Not likely!
I flew and Mark communicated with Ellsworth Airforce Base.  Wonderful Shannon at the FBO had given us these no-brainer directions:

Once within the limits of Mt Rushmore, Mark flew and I pointed my camera right out the little left seat window.

Awesome.  Now, I was ready to go home.

As we left the Black Hills and flew over the roads leading southwest toward Cheyenne, we couldn't help but feel a little bit sorry for the two Coloradoan girls we had met earlier in the day.

They were down there somewhere... driving home to Loveland.