South Dakota’s Badlands & Black Hills

We had two great weeks in South Dakota. The weather has a huge effect on how much we like an area and it was absolutely beautiful when we visited in mid-September.

We started out in the town of Deadwood in the northern Black Hills, dry camping Saturday night in the Days of ’76 museum parking lot which was not free but was within walking distance of all the action. Deadwood is an old mining town notorious for its lawlessness and is still packed with bars and casinos.

We watched an entertaining show at Saloon No. 10, where Wild Bill was gambling the night he was killed. The show ended with a shootout on the street, like every good Western story. Next, we had dinner at Jacob’s Brewhouse and Grocer, then won enough $ at the Franklin Hotel to pay for our dinner, and then unfortunately lost it.

On Sunday, taking advantage of a good weather forecast, we decided to shorten our next reservation and instead go to a popular boondocking spot right outside Badlands National Park. Located in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, this is called ‘Nomad View’ on the Campendium website we use for finding spots like this. It is usually very windy and often has gnarly thunderstorms, but we had perfect weather for the 3 days we were there.

We love it when there is free camping right outside National Parks and were fascinated by the varied landscapes and all the wildlife in this seemingly inhospitable place.

We’d like to spend more time here but we did at least get to drive the scenic loop and hike the Notch trail.

On Tuesday evening we made the short drive back into the Black Hills area to stay in Custer State Park. It’s located in the southern Black Hills near Mount Rushmore and is probably the nicest state park we’ve ever visited.

Our campground, Game Lodge, was near the Wildlife Loop drive through grasslands where we saw bison, burros, and prairie dogs. They even have a small bison museum on the Loop where they do a roundup every fall for vet care and culling the herd.

On the weekend we drove the Needles Highway to Sylvan Lake where most of the good hiking trails are located.

We combined several trails to make a long day hike to Black Elk Peak which is the highest peak east of the Rockies, the Cathedral Spires, and some scrambling up Little Devil’s Tower.

We also drove the Iron Mountain Rd, another RV-unfriendly route through the area with pigtails and tunnels, to see Mount Rushmore.

We went by the Crazy Horse Memorial on our way home, which we didn’t visit this year. We’ve learned about the bi-annual Volksmarch when you can hike up the service road to Crazy Horse’s face! We will definitely return to the area for that sometime.

After a busy workweek, we went to Sylvan Lake a second time and hiked the Sunday Gulch trail. It was starting to look like Fall!

And on Saturday, we went back to Colorado for a few weeks. We loved seeing all the gold aspens last year and wanted to spend more time in Colorado before heading east.