On the edge of the Black Hills and near Custer State Park, Badlands National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, and Mount Rushmore (as well as Custer) is Wind Cave National Park. Although the park has beautiful grounds, hiking trails, camping, and adorable critters such as prairie dogs ,the focus on Wind Cave National Park is on the cave system below. The park offers a variety of different tours to explore the cave.

When we visited we did the Garden of Eden Tour. The tour lasted an hour and takes you through only a couple rooms, with slightly slanted walkways (making it a bit inaccessible at points), but features the boxwork formation, which is what makes Wind Cave so unique. Boxwork is found in other caves, but Wind Cave has the largest amount of the formation. The tour itself involved mostly standing around listening to the ranger tell social narratives of the cave. For those interested in spelunking and geology, other tours may be of more interest. We had something come up the last time we were in the Black Hills, so both of us were excited to finally explore Wind Cave.

Side Note: We definitely recommend getting tickets beforehand and trying to arrive earlier than you think you need to! We had car issues and then got stuck behind a full herd of cows and almost missed our tour time (and the rangers were not understanding about it).