Wind Cave National Park and the Bavarian Inn

From our home base at the Bavarian Inn, we could easily take excursions to surrounding natural attractions, including Wind Cave, a sacred site to the Lakota Sioux tribe, who consider it an important part of their origin story.

Unfortunately, while our guide mentioned that a few times, she never went into any substantial detail.  Suffice it to say that the difference in air pressure inside the cave from what is outdoors makes wind blow out or into a natural hole into the labyrinth of underground explored cave passageways that stretches over 154 miles and counting.

Don't expect carefully and colorfully illuminated stalagmites and stalactites like you might find in Carlsbad or Merrimac Caverns.  The unique feature in this cave beyond its shear length is the world's largest sampling of "boxwork" formations, which look like cardboard boxes.  To me, it looked like petrified seaweed.

In any case, with Wind Cave being a national park, all were required to wear masks, because a cave is considered to be indoors.  Jay and Sasha, who are big mask advocates, were unhappy to see that the guide didn't strictly enforce that on some of their fellow amateur spelunkers on the advanced hike.  However, they said their guide did a great job.

They weren't as happy that the national park banned dogs from the cave tour, which required them to leave JoJo under the loving care of Nana while they went on the morning shift. 

JoJo and other dogs are welcome at Bavarian Inn, a big reason Gina selected this property in hoping to lure families with traveling pups to join their family trip. 

As mentioned previously, there were lots of fun activities available at Bavarian Inn.  Jay and I headed to the basketball court to play H-O-R-S-E, Sasha was impressed when I drained my first jump shot from 3-point land.  I should have probably quit at that point, but we carried on to play a few games, where our accuracy proved less than stellar but was nonetheless a bit of fun exercise.

After the basketball games, the rest of us headed over for our turn touring the Wind Cave in the afternoon.  Whereas Jay and Sasha were offended by fellow guests pulling down their masks and coughing, I must confess that any time we walked single-file into one of the darker corridors of the cave where no one could see me, my mask came down too.  In fact, it is only in deference to rules of places we visit that I wear one at all.

As inferred above, our guide didn't seem as well-versed in the native American history as I would have preferred, and based on other information shared by Jay and Sasha from their tour, that was true about other aspects, but that's just the luck of the draw.

After we returned from the cave tunnels, we enjoyed a family game of Bridge in one of the cozy outdoor spaces we staked out for ourselves over the course of our stay at Bavarian Inn.  

Any family reunion always involve a few games, and in fact, we play Bridge using an online game in conjunction with a Zoom call almost every Sunday when we're apart.

I love my family.  I'm always happy to be with them virtually when being together in person isn't an option, but as everyone knows, being close and personal is much more human and therefore better.

Photos between bookends of Jay and Sasha in the Wind Cave
were taken by Jay.