The national park service oversees two different cave systems in the Black Hills area. We visited both- the first being Jewel Cave NM. Jewel Cave is the third longest cave system in the world and is so named because of its numerous calcite formations. We saw several examples of stalagmites, stalactites, cave popcorn, and cave bacon during our tour.
We had time to kill before our tour, so the kids worked on activities to earn their Junior Ranger badge.
Jewel Cave was nice (but I still like Mammoth Cave better).
The other cave in the region is Wind Cave NP- the sixth longest cave system in the world. Wind Cave is known for having a rare cave feature called boxwork, and we saw a lot of that.
I didn't want the two cave experiences to be the same, so I booked us on a "Candlelight" tour at Wind Cave. This was really fun. We went off of the beaten path- literally- there were times where we were crawling and we had only a small candle bucket for light. Because of the requirements for this tour, we were not allowed to take photos inside of the cave. The guide took one and texted it to us, but it turned out bad because the light from the flash blinded us. We would all like to try a "wild cave" tour at some point, but are not able to yet because there is usually an age requirement that the kids don't meet yet. The candlelight tour was a good way to have a more adventurous experience in the cave that the kids can do.
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