Wind Cave National Park Scrapbook Layout

After leaving the Badlands and Wall, SD, we headed for Custer State Park. On our way, we stopped at Wind Cave National Park, which borders Custer on the south. We arrived early in the morning to secure tickets for a cave tour, and had no problem getting tickets for a tour that started about 45 minutes after we arrived.

We spent a little time in the visitor center while waiting for our tour, and looked at the exhibits and worked on my son's Junior Ranger booklet. We picked up our map, passport stamps and some souvenirs, including a postcard that I knew I would use in the scrapbook. I took a photo of our tour ticket and a few signs along the way.

The cave tour was great! The ranger was so friendly and knowledgeable, and we stuck close to the front of the group - the boys got to lead the group a few times when the ranger hung back for stragglers, and they thought that was the coolest. Wind Cave is known for it's unique geologic formation called boxwork, and has 95% of the worlds known boxwork. We got to see quite a bit of it.

After the tour we walked back to the Natural Entrance of the cave - the original entrance that the ranger had showed us, so we could get some photos and feel the cold air blowing out of the natural entrance. After that, my son finished up his ranger book and got his badge, and we left the visitor center. 

I created 4 2-page layouts for Wind Cave. Taking photos in the cave was very challenging, the best photos were taken with no flash but since I didn't have much time to adjust the manual settings during the tour, they tend to be just a little blurry due to camera shake. But several of them still turned out good enough to include in the scrapbook.

We all loved our visit to Wind Cave, and even though it was not our first cave experience (we had been to one cave back home) it was a great experience. From here we continued North and left the border of Wind Cave and went directly into Custer State Park, where we spent the next three days exploring.