Family Nature Summits: Black Hills Summit

Come From Away arrives as a music-driven stage story drawn from real events. Black Hills Playhouse presents the production at Theatre 605 in the Black Hills. You experience a shared human response during a global crisis, told through song, dialogue, and ensemble performance. The show focuses on connection, generosity, and the choices people make when strangers arrive without warning.

The performance moves at a steady pace and places you inside a town shaped by an unexpected arrival. Music carries the action, while multiple roles shift in clear view. The result feels communal, direct, and grounded in lived experience.
Ensemble storytelling that follows travelers and residents through intersecting moments.

The Black Hills Playhouse has been hosting summer productions on the site of a historic CCC camp since 1946.  

Cost: $40

Step off the beaten path and into the complex, interconnected world of the American prairie. While the grasslands may look like an open expanse at first glance, they are actually a bustling, intricately woven ecosystem shaped by remarkable inhabitants. Join naturalists from American Prairie for an immersive walk in the prairie. On this casual walk, we will journey near a thriving prairie dog town and explore how three keystone species—bison, beavers, and prairie dogs—act as nature’s ultimate architects. You will discuss phenology and other seasonal observations, and the important role of disturbance ecology in shaping the plains. The walk will also discuss historic species loss on the plains, as well as and the work and research underway to help recover the populations and restore ecological processes of the prairie. 
American Prairie is a nonprofit with a mission is to create one of the largest nature reserves in the United States, a refuge for people and wildlife preserved forever as part of America’s heritage. They work with organizations such as the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and National Geographic.

This one-hour tour is our least strenuous tour. It is a wonderful sample of Wind Cave. Small amounts of all of the beautiful cave formations - boxwork, cave popcorn, and flowstone - are seen along this 1/4 mile tour. The tour is designed for people with limited time or abilities. It enters and leaves the cave by elevator with 150 steps along the tour route.

Duration: 1 hour
Distance: 1/4 mile (1/2 kilometer)
Total stairs: 150
Difficulty: Moderate; stairs can be steep, slippery and dimly lit. Bending and stooping required.
Description: See boxwork, frostwork, flowstone and cave popcorn along this route.

"...[We] wonder if it will be possible to so describe those wonderful scenes as to represent with even a limited degree of fairness or justice the awe-inspiring grandeur of the entire trip, or the perfection of fragile loveliness formed and preserved as by special miracles in the Garden of Eden..." - Edward C Horn, Mazes and Marvels, 1898

The land in Wind Cave National Park is sacred land to the Cheyenne and Lakota.   There is a story of how the Lakota emerged from the spirit world through a passageway called MAKA ONIYE, or “breathing earth”.  This was Wind Cave.  People were to wait in this spirit world until Earth was ready for them to be born.
 
As I scouted the land above the cave, I used my “camera eyes”, perpetually scouring the landscape for great photo opportunities.  As I peered across the spacious, rolling hills, I began to view the top layer of the prairie as skin.  When the skin is peeled back, what’s below emerges.  This field trip has us traversing two above-ground backroads of Wind Cave National Park.  The entry road into the southern boundary of the Park is aptly called Red Valley Road, and red it is!!   As we progress along these roads, we are quite probably traversing above some remarkable land features that are hidden to us by the prairie skin.  In a few places, the skin has been peeled back by the great powers of the Earth – water, wind, and fire, and we become privy to the beauty underneath the prairie skin. 
 
The treasures that await us are deep red winding gullies, solitary sentinel trees, yucca, mullein, bison, prairie dogs, fantastic rock formations, and curious donkeys. You’ll develop your “camera eyes” and with plenty of help available from your (mostly) fearless leader, you can maximize gorgeous compositions to bring home.
 
I will be bringing my cell phone, of course, but also my DSLR and one zoom lens that will accommodate my personal aesthetic.  I found the brightness of this environment to be challenging, due to my cell phone’s screen being quite hidden by the glare of the sun.  Cell phones will still gather amazing images, but help yourself out by bringing a wide-brimmed hat.  (If you don’t own one, before the Summit is the time to shop for one!)  It will shade the brightness sufficiently to help you see the screen and take your compositions more seriously.  A DSLR will be the key to slowing down and really painting your compositions on your image sensor.  With today’s image stabilization built in to most DSLR bodies and lenses, you will be able to make camera settings that allow you to leave the tripod at home or in your cabin.  Your (mostly) fearless leader will assist you in knowing those camera settings.
 
This is a road trip, not a hike, and will be offered twice.  We’ll stop and shoot at places where my “camera eyes” detected great opportunities for images that define the land that hides Wind Cave under the prairie skin.  I aim for you to develop your own interpretation of this remarkable landscape, and maybe you’ll adopt my sense that the prairie has many treasures hidden below its skin. 
 
Comfort Notes:
1)    There are no bathrooms, but halfway through the trip, I’ve identified a pretty good spot in some trees to pee discreetly. Bring a bit of tissue and a plastic sandwich bag to collect your tissue. I’ll have a larger plastic bag to contain your used supplies and we’ll toss everything when we get to a waste bin back in civilization.)
 
I strongly frown on sandals or open-toed shoes for this trip.  Closed shoes help protect from ticks.  I wear leg gaiters permeated with permethrin.  From the van to where you’ll stand for best compositions, you need to walk “over there” (i.e., not far) through short prairie grass.  Bring closed shoes, some kind of tick protection, and leave the sandals in your room.

Join us for a full-day tour of the unique sites south of Custer State Park. We will start our day at the Mammoth Site with a guided tour of a unique and active paleontological dig site and museum with the world’s largest concentration of mammoth remains. From there, we will drive six minutes to the highly rated Pioneer Museum. Housed in a 1893 schoolhouse, the museum hosts 25 exhibit areas with artifacts, local art, and period clothing.  We will walk across the street to the cool, shady Centennial Park along the riverfront to enjoy our picnic lunch. Our last stop will be at the Windcave National Park Visitors Center to learn about the unique geology and cultural significance of the area, Native American tribes, and the features of Wind Cave, both underground in its unique cave system and the grasslands above.
Cost $16