Natural Entrance Tour is one of the most recommended tour for most people at Wind Cave National Park. The tour itself is about 45 minutes long. The ranger takes a group of 40 people through the underground cave and walk through the paved path to see all the special rock formations in the cave.
We made reservation for Natural Entrance Tour on recreation.gov, but tickets can be purchased on the day of at the visitor center as well. The ticket for Natural Entrance tour is blue colour. The meet up place is under the hut just right outside of the visitor center.
The ranger first took us to the Natural Entrance. Natural Entrance is a hole above the ground that connects to the cave beneath the ground. Natural Entrance is fairly small though and no one can fit in there. The Natural Entrance is a sacred place for the native people and thus we have to be respectful to their traditions. The native people believe that Natural Entrance is the gateway between our world and the spirit world.
To enter the cave, there is a separate entrance on the side. We first took the stairs to go all the way down into the cave. On the way down, there were light on the side so we did not have to bring any flashlight. Some part of the cave was a bit low and tall people would need to lower their head.
Inside the cave, we could see some strange cave structures. One of the most famous thing to see here is the box work. It is called box work just because it looks like boxes and most of these box work in the world can only be found at Wind Cave National Park.
Towards the end of the tour, we got into this big room and we were allowed to walk around freely in there. The ranger also turned off all the light source just to give people a feel of complete darkness. It was pretty interesting.
At the end of the tour, we took the elevator back up. The elevator could only take 10 people at the time, so it was a long process to get everyone back up.
Natural Entrance tour at Wind Cave National Park was definitely an interesting tour. Even for people who are afraid of darkness, they would be able to enjoy Natural Entrance tour as well since there are light sources along the path all the time.
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