Bison, Jewel Cave and Custer

 August 7th 2023

We booked a Discovery Tour at Jewel Cave which is in Custer State Park. The tour began at 8.50am and we were to be there thirty minutes prior so we had an early start. This worked out great as we saw bison on the way!

Custer State Park is 71,000 acres and there are main roads that run through the park. We were driving along one enjoying the quiet misty morning when I spotted something as we turned a corner, Bison!! I pretty much screamed! Wow! Was so cool to see them and there was no one else around. If you have seen some footage of places like Yellowstone there can be lines of cars parked up along the roadside when someone spots any wildlife. They call them Bison jams or Bear jams. But that morning it was just John and I

We would have loved to sit all day and watch them but we had to get to the cave. The tour we had booked was a twenty minute taster tour of the cave. We had booked a short tour as on Wednesday we had booked a long tour of nearby Wind Cave and I did not want to do two long cave tours.

https://www.nps.gov/jeca/index.htm

The caves were a lot of fun and would be somewhere I would visit again.

Map of the 215 miles of passages

The Wild Caving Tour is an option I decided not to choose. You squeeze through tiny gaps for three or four hours. The Picture above is John seeing what it would be like to try to get through some of the cracks in the cave! There  were other tours including a lantern tour that sounded cool.

On the way home we stopped at the town of Custer. A very small place and not that interesting though we did see the motorbike parking set up for the bikers touring around the area while enjoying the Sturgis Festival.

On the last bit of our drive home we saw the bison again. They were still hanging around the same area we had seen them a few hours earlier. More pictures!