Back to Travel Back to Black Hills Home Back to Home
 
Some of the broken formations are almost like geodes.
Though not common in that particular cave, Jewel Cave has some boxworks.
Climbing through a gallery of sculpted stone.
A close up of some of the nodules encrusting nearly everything down here.
The walk seems to disappear into the internals of the mountain.
Another platform, suspended over a large cavern. This part of the cave seems more and more like a living thing.
Standing at the edge of what looks like a yawning mouth.
A closer look down one of the hanging tunnels.
Above:
Digital cameras, mean everyone is a photographer.

Left:
some of the strange multi colored formations, reflecting the different minerals which leach down into the cave.
A wall full of what appear to be sea anenomies, and assorted other sea life.
The various pocks and streamers lining the cave walls reinforce the illusion that you are underwater, traveling along some sort of reef.
An odd mixture of flowstone, budding stalactites, and crystals.
Looking as if they just froze in place, these larval stalactites are hundreds of years old, and will not achieve their goal of reaching the cavern floor for many thousands of years more.
A look into one of the countless crevasses' lining the main passages of the cave system. All lead off to who knows where, and insure that it will be many years before the cave is completely explored.
If the cave is a living thing, then this part must be sick.
Occasionally, a light is hidden in a strategic spot. As with other NPS caves, no colored lights are used to enhance the rocks.
Like mice scuttling around a big old house, our little group eases its way down an assortment of cracks and fissures.
About to head up, through another crack, and wend our way to one of the large chambers.
No human produced graffiti on this wall; but nature has taken a hand and made a number of scrawled comments of its own.
Watching the flowstone flow, would take quite a bit more patience than any of us have, not to mention a long life. It takes thousands of years for any perceivable change to occur.
These rocks have visibly parted, and created a new fissure. Though this is many years old, it is a young structure, by the standards of this cave.
A couple shows their grandson the sights.
Back to Jewel Cave Forward to still more of Jewel Cave