I am not sure why so many of my adventures this last year have involved caves, but here we are at another one! My friends, Janice and Taylor, and I decided to take a three-day trip up to the Black Hills in western South Dakota in May to camp, hike, and see some National Park Service units before the summer tourist season began in full force. Our first stop (after lunch in Newcastle, WY at Donna’s Diner) was Jewel Cave National Monument.
Currently the world’s fifth longest cave, 220.01 miles of Jewel Cave have been mapped as of May 2024, with more mileage racking up pretty consistently. Four varieties of tours are offered, ranging from introductory 20-minute peeks to wild caving tours lasting hours. We decided on the 1 hour 20 minute Scenic Tour, which loops about a half mile underground, and beings and ends with an elevator ride from the visitor center (my first cave involving an elevator!). I did book our tickets in advance, as tours sell out and day-of tickets are quite the gamble to get.
We arrived a few hours ahead of our tour time, so we ransacked the gift shop for souvenirs (including me buying so many postcards… the new hyperfixation apparently), browsed the exhibits, and picked up junior ranger books to complete. The weather was pretty nice, so we sat on the picnic tables and tag-teamed the junior ranger books, arguing over answers, and learning all the new things.
Ranger Millie swore us in as Junior Rangers after sending us to watch the park film (this was Janice’s and Taylor’s first junior ranger badge!), and she was also our tour guide for the Scenic Tour. We had just a short wait in the visitor center before we gathered for the prerequisite “do not touch the cave” instructions.
A first for me in all these recent cave adventures was an elevator ride to start the tour. After going through an airlock, we grouped up in the Target Room to begin the tour. With my most recent cave being Mammoth Cave, which is massive, but really lacking in cave formations, Jewel Cave would be quite the different with its formations, including calcite crystals, spar crystals, and some boxwork (though not as much as in nearby Wind Cave).
Ranger Millie would stop and regroup us every so often to talk about parts of the cave, ranging from pointing out formations to doing a lights-off demonstration of just how dark a cave gets, to talking about Herb and Jan Conn and their exploration of Jewel Cave that took the mapped passageways from two miles to hundreds of miles.
After about an hour underground, we arrived to the sanitation mat at the exit and our elevator to take us above ground. (Random, but the sanitation mat didn’t even get most of my shoes wet…) I really enjoyed Jewel Cave itself, and the variety of formations. Despite all my recent cave visits, I always find something in each cave that is new and unique!
However, I have mixed opinions on the tour at Jewel Cave because flashlights and flash photography were allowed – something NOT allowed in Timpanogos, Lehman, or Mammoth Caves that I recently visited. This led to being blinded by people’s phones (and also disrupted me trying to take my own photos as their flash would change the exposure), and there was a small child shining an LED flashlight directly into everyone’s eyes, sometimes pointing it right at your face and switching it on and off. This detracted from the experience significantly, and I noted it in my recreation.gov review of the tour. With so many other NPS-managed caves not allowing flash photography or flashlights, I’m not sure why Jewel Cave allows them. The lighting inside the cave is ample enough for navigation around the tour route, and modern day smartphones are more than capable of photographing the cave without the use of flash.
We headed east from Jewel Cave to the town of Custer, where we would spend two nights at Custer Mountain Campground. We had a lovely tent camping site in this campground that was definitely experiencing the “calm before the storm” of tourist season that would be beginning the following weekend. We grabbed dinner at Pizza Mill before settling in for an early night.
Our long weekend would be rounded out with hiking Black Elk Peak (high point of South Dakota), Mount Rushmore, and Wind Cave National Park – eventually all to be blogged!
The Adventuring Heidi 
Oooh pretty! I visited Jewel Cave when I was… 12 maybe? Suffice it to say I don’t really remember it, so this was like seeing it for the first time all over again. That sucks about the flashes and lights, though… that sounds really obnoxious.
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