Spelunking
Friday Morning, I decided to go try what was termed as an adventure cave tour. This was where they take you beyond where the regular tour goes, in areas that don’t have any lights and require you to crawl through some extremely small spaces. There were only 3 of us in the group, not including the guide. The guide was a young 21 y/o kid and the other two were a brother and sister. The brother was 20 and his sister was 15. Once we donned our helmets, headlamps, elbow and knee pads, we started the tour. The first part of the tour started out by going along the normal tour route. We then came to our first small hole to crawl through. This wasn’t too bad as we only had to crawl about 7 feet before coming out into a large cavern. After this first simple crawl, things started to get a little more strenuous and tight. We crawled up and down all these tiny, little tunnels and cracks and some of these tunnels went on and on before opening up to small open spaces. One of the last areas we went through was not only small but started out downhill with a sharp bend up and to the right, requiring some precise maneuvering. I was bringing up the rear and sure as hell, I managed to get stuck with one arm stretched out in front of me and one stuck at my side and my face in the dirt. I lay there thinking “great, now I am going to have to get my old ass pulled out of this hole by a couple of kids, how embarrassing”. I somehow managed to back up a little ways and get my other arm out in front of me and wiggle my way up and out of the tunnel. I sure was glad that the last few crawls were a bit less confining.
Wall Drug and Wounded Knee museum
I had some lunch at one of the bar/cafes there was this TV behind the bar and it was a channel I had never heard of called the World Heritage Channel. I watched the last half of Green Acres and the first half of Daniel Boone. I vaguely remember these shows from when I was a kid. I actually found I was enjoying the shows. It’s amazing how much television shows have changed since I was a kid.
After lunch, I went to this museum that is dedicated to the massacre at Wounded Knee in December of 1890. I didn’t know much about this tragic event in our country's history but after I left the museum I was even more convinced that the US government totally screwed the American Indian and this event was a real tragedy. The US military slaughtered a lot of defenseless Lakota Indians who were doing nothing more than trying to get to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. A very sad chapter American history.
As I drove south on an almost empty Highway 83, I saw something large and black in the road. I just assumed it was a piece of tire in the road. I move over to the left side of my lane and as I passed the object I noticed that it was moving. I was like, “holy crap, what’s that?”. I hit the brakes hard and swung around and drove back up to where this thing was. As I made another u-turn to get back into the south bound lane, the critter was just crawling off the road and into the grass. I quickly hopped off my bike and grabbed my camera. It was a very large turtle. I must have spooked him because he stopped moving and just lay there in the grass. It was all covered in mud and was obviously trying to make it to a large body of water not too far off.
I stopped for the night in Valentine, NE. It’s going to be hot driving for the rest of the trip home so I will be getting up very early so that I can get in some good miles before it starts getting unbearably hot.
Wow, that turtle is huge!
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