Road Trip Day Three: Jewel Cave, Center of the US, ND, MT

We let the kids sleep in a bit, had another big breakfast at the Wrangler Café, and then headed to Jewel Cave National Monument. Road trip lesson of the day: When the website for a National Monument says that tours fill up quickly, you should believe it. We got there a few minutes before 10:00 and the next tour they had available was at 11:00. Since we had an hour to kill we watched a little Discovery Channel movie on caves and then played virtual hide and seek with kids. By the time we started our tour, the sign said the next available time was at 5:20 p.m. I’m glad we weren’t any later arriving or we would have had to scratch our cave plans entirely.

The cave tour started with an elevator ride that took us down 24 stories. It was the first time any of our kids had been in a cave and they were genuinely excited about seeing all of the different formations. They took loads of pictures. At one point the ranger asked for an 8-year-old volunteer to guide the group for a short stretch of the path, so Emily got to take the lead. She was pretty happy about getting to take his flashlight and lead the way. Elise was pretty sure that “Emily always gets to do everything.” “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.” There were 723 stairs along the tour route. It was a bit of a workout for the kids’ little legs, but they did great.




There is a cement block outside of the visitor center with an opening that is 24 inches wide by 8.5 inches high. Anyone who wants to take the spelunking tour has to fit through it before they can attempt the tour. Nate and the kids each tried it out and they all passed the test. Why anyone would want to belly crawl through tight passages like that hundreds of feet below the ground is a mystery to me.


We swung by Crazy Horse on our way north. We were too cheap to pay to get in, so we just took a picture from the road. It is going to be quite impressive when they are done.


We thought it would be neat to drive through the Black Hills on the way north instead of just taking the freeway. We were wrong. Road trip lesson of the day #2: Scenic routes are over-rated when you are traveling long distances. Lesson learned.

We took a little dirt road out of Belle Fourche to the geographic center of the United States. I’m pretty sure that only geography nerds like Nate would go out of their way to see such a thing, but since he is a geography nerd and since it was only a seven mile detour (each way), we decided to stop. When we got there a nice rancher lady and her grandson were there hanging a flag up at the “monument”. It was fun to chat with the locals and the flag made the whole thing seem more official.



One of our objectives for this trip was to check off North Dakota on our list of states. We did. It was windy and the chicken from Chester’s Deli (inside the Sinclair station in Bowman) wasn’t so great. That pretty much sums up our North Dakota experience.


It was a long day of driving. Thank everything for audiobooks and portable DVD players. The kids watched Swiss Family Robinson and listened to a few chapters of Harry Potter. It kept them entertained while we drove hundreds of miles through the middle of nowhere. Nate and I were amazed by how long we could drive without seeing any signs of civilization (besides the road). Somewhere along that highway we ran over a turtle. I was sure it was a turtle when I saw it, but it seemed crazy that turtles would be roaming free in rural South Dakota. I googled it and found out that there are seven turtle species in South Dakota and five of them are endangered, rare, or threatened. Oops.

We stopped in Miles City, Montana for the night. I was more than a little disappointed that our hotel didn’t have a hot tub (how did I miss that when I was making the reservations?), but I got over it and we had lots of fun playing in the pool. We did races and played Marco Polo and sharks and minnows. It was a fun night.