I'm in no way a gifted writer, but I've been trying to document more of our family vacations and keep them filed away for when we're old and can't remember this stuff. I figured I'd at least turn it into a trip report and hopefully some of y'all find it helpful and/or enjoyable to read. We spent 7 nights and 6 full days up in South Dakota visiting the Custer, SD area and Badlands NP with our 9 year old, grandparents, and my brother in law. 5 nights were spent tent camping and 2 in a hotel near Badlands NP. Sorry if it's a bit long.

Prep
Since we love exploring the country through camping, we're always tinkering with our setup. Last couple of years we had a roof carrier plus a cargo basket that attached to the back hitch. This ended up not working very well because the cargo basket would scrape whenever we encountered even moderately rough roads. We sold both of those and added the roof basket with cargo bins, which worked so much better for us. Another change was the addition of a 5 pound propane tank instead of the little 1 pound green ones. One heavy duty bungee cord, a tie down, and part of an old yoga mat and it wasn't going anywhere on the basket. Ok, enough rambling about our setup.




Day 1
We arrived late the previous night and had a mad dash to get dinner made plus the tent and sleeping gear all set up before our light disappeared. We were at Sheridan Lake Campground in the Black Hills National Forest, which in our opinion is a really good central location and not terribly far from most of the locations we were going to visit (Custer SP, Mt Rushmore, Wind Cave, Jewel Cave). For all you tent campers out there, site 35 at this campground is a great one as it's an outer loop spot near the back of the campground with lots of space to set up. Overall, the spacing between sites at this campground is definitely adequate where you don't feel like you're on top of your neighbor.


We started off the day with Custer SP. The main goal was to drive part of the Needles Highway, see the Needles Eye Tunnel and get a hike in before lunch. Traffic was already starting to pickup by 9am as we made our way up to the Needles Eye Tunnel. There's a decent amount of parking there (9-10 cars I'd estimate) and it's a good place to get out, walk around, and take pictures. Plus, there are a few places off the road to explore via climbing around all the rocks. A couple of ways will get you up on the rocks looking down as people drive into the tunnel. Couldn't get any pics of the cars driving into the tunnel unfortunately.


Views from the parking lot at the tunnel


Climbing in the rocks around the tunnel

Return trip through the tunnel

After a good 20-30 minutes at the tunnel, we got back in the car and were off to our hike. The plan was to do the Cathedral Spires trail. It's 1.6 miles round trip, moderately strenuous with a 500 feet elevation gain. Most of that is in the first half mile, then it's a more gentle elevation gain to the end. Definitely glad we got to the trailhead when we did, as parking is tight there and we got one of the last few spots. As the pictures show, the trail name is appropriate. Some crazy people…I mean…rock climbers were out scaling these spires and we could hear them shouting back and forth to each other about the view while they were up there. You can see the silhouette of them in one of the pics I got. Once you're at the flatter section, it's wide open to get a bit off trail and explore, which we absolutely did.






Day 1 to be continued. Next stop for the day is The Mammoth Site.

Day 1 continued
After finishing up the hike, we headed over to Hot Springs, SD to visit The Mammoth Site. It is the world's largest mammoth research site and also an active paleontological dig site. They essentially built the museum around the dig site to allow for the public to view and learn more about the history of the site. We also did their "family dig" program, which is designed to mimic and teach about how paleontologists safely dig for and extract historical artifacts. Our daughter loved it.

From Custer, SD over to Hot Springs, SD we passed by/through part of Wind Cave National Park and saw one of many prairie dog towns on our visit. They are clearly not terribly scared of humans and had no issues walking up to within 5 feet or so of my wife taking pictures.









After the Mammoth Site, we headed back to the campground for dinner and rest (not without stopping to get some pics of a bison herd who looked to have decided to rest for the night). However, at the urging of our daughter, we decided to stop in Custer, SD for dessert before dinner (because why not….). I would highly recommend stopping by the Purple Pie Place if you're ever up in Custer, SD. I am not a huge pie fan in general, but the strawberry rhubarb pie was fantastic!

Day 2 Deadwood, SD
It wasn't planned this way, but we ended up staying the whole day in Deadwood, SD on day 2. It's really a cool city with a historic main street that is the major highlight of the town. We ended up getting there a bit earlier in the day, not realizing much of the entertainment starts mid-afternoon. Since we had some time to kill, we decided to go on a tour of the historic Adams House. Our daughter loves seeing historical places like this where there are lots of, in her opinion, "fancy" things to look at (dolls, quill pens, dresses, etc). Not our first choice, but the tour guide was great, which made it much more enjoyable. It's pretty crazy to see all these historical houses of the wealthy and see how much intricate work went into them. Marble sinks with gold trim, elaborate wood carvings, labor intensive wood floor designs, the list goes on and on.





After the house tour, we headed over to the main st in the city for the start of the historical re-enactments. They block off a portion of the street for 5-15 minute performances by a theater group. Geared more towards the kids, but it's more entertaining than history class at least. After the first "show", they set up a card table for kids to come play go fish with one of the performers. One of the other dads was talking with the performer playing cards and turns out this guy actually went onto America's Got Talent, so I put his video below (hopefully it works). The whole day of these performances ends up with the Trial of Jack McCall at the end of the day. We hadn't planned on staying the whole day, but our girl was having so much fun, we stayed until the end and got tickets for the trial. She was over the moon because they picked a few kids to be part of the trial as jury members and she got picked. All these characters walk around the town during the day and they do a good job with the kids throughout the day.
Food choices are a bit limited, mostly bars and casinos with attached restaurants that didn't appear to be that well reviewed online. We did find a pizza place inside a saloon that was decent enough. Parking is ample across the town and not terribly expensive. I think we paid $10 to park in the main garage in the middle of the main strip.








Next up, Mt Rushmore and Jewel Cave National Monument

Great Choice. Way to go Ag!

Spent about a week rollin around South Dakota last summer.

Custer is as close to a national park as you can get and so freaking cool. Didn't even see some of the places you went in the park. So much there. The wildlife is also crazy.

Spearfish is a great town to head too afterward. Chill vibe.

Skip Deadwood. Tourist trap with crappy casinos though a new high end one is opening this summer.

I'd suggest heading west after and trying to hit the Sheridan Rodeo.

Great part of the world.

Day 3 Mt Rushmore and Jewel Cave National Monument
Everything we read said to get to Mt Rushmore earlier in the day to avoid the heavy crowds. I think we got there right around 9am and it was definitely a lighter crowd, but even in the 10 minutes we spent in the parking garage (slow in-laws), the traffic coming in was already picking up.
Visiting Mt Rushmore can definitely be done in just a few short hours. There's a nice exhibit area that has info on the creation and construction of the monument, an informative 15-20 minute video, plenty of viewpoints, and a 0.6 mile loop that gets you up close to the monument. The entire loop has over 400 steps if I remember correctly. If you want to avoid them, start by going left at the end of the main walkway and go in a clockwise direction for the loop. It's only about a quarter of a mile out to get to up close views, then just turn back. We did not do that and were pressed for time, so it was a moderately strenuous task to do the full counterclockwise loop.



On to Jewel Cave National Monument after finishing with Mt Rushmore. Not much to say about this one, we did one of the basic tours. It was ok, but I'm not a big cave guy, so cave tours have never been particularly entertaining. Plus the guide was less than stellar. Lots of crystals in the cave, hence the name.



Cave Bacon!

Definitely not the most efficient use of the day due to driving distances. However, this was a function of cave tour times and trying to accommodate the rest of the group with what they wanted to do.

Day 4 to include Custer SP Wildlife Loop, Sylvan Lake, and Wind Cave National Park

Beware Stormtroopers on the Needles Highway!
This nerd was posted up at one of the tunnels a few days ago!

Day 4 Custer SP Wildlife Loop, Sylvan Lake, and Wind Cave NP


Alright, the goal of day 4 was to get out early and make our way over to the Blue Bell Lodge to meet up with the in-laws and get going on the Wildlife loop. Despite it's popularity and reputation as a great road for wildlife viewing, it's surprisingly annoying and difficult to find exactly what roads cover the loop. And if we're being totally honest here, it's really not a loop, but more of a "U". Anyway, the trip is 18 miles long, with many side roads to explore. Since we were coming from Custer, SD, we started on the western side of the loop. Head south on 87, past Blue Bell Lodge and Blue Bell Campground and turn at the Blue Bell Entrance Station. This is the start of the Wildlife loop. The main loop road is paved and most of the side roads are gravel, but well maintained no 4x4 or high clearance looked to be necessary. There is the Bison Center and Wildlife Station Visitor Center along drive. When they open, you can either call or go inside and the workers should have information of where the various wildlife have last been spotted. The main attraction of the loop is the bison. When we drove the loop, they were off one of the side roads near the Wildlife Station Visitor Center. The rest of the loop took us past the Custer State Park Airport (who knew they had an airport?!?!) and we ended up at what I believe is the main Custer State Park Visitor Center.








After the wildlife viewing, we headed back to Custer for a real breakfast and then on to Sylvan Lake as we had some time to kill before our Wind Cave tour…

If you're up that way, it's worth 15 minutes in Lead (Pronounced LEED) to visit the Homestake open pit gold mine. It was the largest open pit gold mine in the Western Hemisphere. If you are a fan of HBO's "Deadwood", Mr. Hearst played by Gerald McRaney was the main owner of the mine. This Mr. Hearst earned his fortune, bought a newspaper in San Francisco that he gave to his son, William Randolph Hearst, who built a media empire.


We rolled through Custer late afternoon. Pretty amazing to see the Buffalo up close.

Sylvan Lake and Wind Cave NP

Sylvan Lake has to be the most popular location in all of Custer SP. We got there around 11am and parking was extremely difficult. Not only is the lake very picturesque, there is fishing, a swimming area, plus kayak/canoe/paddleboard rentals. Additionally, there are a number of popular hikes that originate at this lake. This was a Wednesday and parking was at the point where you just had to circle around and hope someone was pulling out as you came up to the spot. We were only there for about an hour, just enough time to let our daughter have some time at the "beach" and swimming area, plus some time to walk around and get some pics.

Just a few pics from wind cave. Just like with Jewel Cave, it was interesting, but not my absolute favorite because I'm not that big into caves in general. We did have a great tour guide who made the tour much more enjoyable than I was expecting. The biggest feature of Wind Cave is the boxwork. I believe the guide said Wind Cave has something like 90% of the known boxwork formations on earth. Made up of blades of calcite that remained after carbonic acid wore away the limestone.
There are multiple tours that they offer. We wanted to go on the lantern tour, where everyone gets a lantern just like in the original tours from 100+ years ago (i.e. a candle inside a sideways tin can with a handle). Unfortunately, we had too many physical limitations in our group to do this one.







Next up last day in the Custer area and travel to The Badlands

Day 5 Custer SP and Badlands NP
Given the weather in Badlands was about 10 degrees hotter than the weather in the Custer area, we decided to pack up in the morning and explore Custer SP a bit more, then drive over to Badlands NP for evening exploration. One of the hikes my wife found in her research was the Sunday Gulch trail, which is behind the far side of the lake (opposite the parking lot area). Very few places mentioned this one as a recommended hike. Honestly, we can't figure out why it essentially got overlooked by most. It's a 4-mile loop, but the best part of it is the first maybe half mile. The first half mile or so is a moderately challenging descent down into the gulch, where you have to navigate boulders and makeshift steps, as well as water (which apparently varies in volume depending on how much is being released from Sylvan Lake). There are handrails for probably 90% of the descent. We actually did part of the descent the previous day, but had to turn back due to time constraints. Well, this time we got down to the bottom of the handrail section. We didn't have any goal of doing the whole loop, so we turned right back around and climbed back up. Honestly I felt the ascent was not as daunting as the descent because I think you get much better footing going up. I had a couple of small slips going down and could easily see more injuries if you're not paying attention on the way down. If you're planning on just doing the handrail section, you want to do the loop counterclockwise. The trailhead is pretty well marked. We didn't have any issue finding it.








After we got back up to the trailhead, we headed over to the West/Northwest point of the lake. There's a tunnel that will take you back over to the lake. There is a series of stones that will take you over to the top of the dam on this side of the lake.
We headed back over to the parking area for lunch at the car before heading out to get to our hotel by the Badlands NP.




More to come later because it's already way too late to continue.

Day 6 (final day) Badlands NP
Our plan for this day was to hike in the morning, rest at the hotel mid-day (they do have an above ground pool for those who are interested) due to the heat, then drive the wildlife loop. There were a few hikes we had to pass on due to physical limitations, but there are still plenty of easy to moderate hikes to fill a couple of days.
The first trail was the Cliff Shelf Nature Trail. It's a pretty easy trail that is a boardwalk for the entire time. There are a decent number of steps, but nothing unmanageable. Views are nice with the green set against the various shades of brown of the badlands.




A short drive up the main park road took us back to the parking lot of the Door Trail. There are actually 3 hikes at this parking lot (4 if you include the hike that you can get to across the street). The Door, Window, and Notch trails all originate here. The window trail is really a trail in name only its about a 500 foot boardwalk out to an overlook.
The Notch Trail is what we were here for. It's a 1.5 mile out and back that is said to be moderate to strenuous. The 2 main challenges are a 50 foot wooden ladder to climb up, then some narrow ledges as you make your way over to the "notch". We got to the ladder and the in-laws decided to hang back (one recently injured her foot and knee, and the other his back) and just rest in some shade. Definitely wouldn't suggest attempting this in heavy rain as the ledges all slope down towards the canyon, which is a 50 foot dropoff to the bottom. When you get near the end of the trail, there's a fork and the trail markers will direct you to the right, which takes you to the "notch". You can also go left and there is another view point just a little ways down (maybe a tenth of a mile).
First pic below is the view from the end of the Window Trail, and the rest are from the Notch Trail.












Back to the hotel for rest, lunch, and pool time. Then off we went to get the Junior Ranger Badge for our daughter, and continuing on to the wildlife loop. While it wasn't projected to have any rain this day, just as we were starting, the wind decided to pick up, clouds rolled in, and it got quite a bit darker. Thankfully there was only a minimal amount of rain and it didn't last too long. However, we discovered that even a small amount of rain will turn the ground into an absolute pit of stickiness that takes a great deal of work to get it off your shoes! You can see the footprints in one of the pics below.
We did see some bighorn sheep on the loop, who were safely settled in up on a narrow ridge away from any possible threat.
Finally made it to a big pullout where 10+ bison had decided to hang out and rub all over the wooden posts. We stayed there for a good 30-45 minutes they came and went. Saw a few short battles between the males, which was a first for us. The biggest highlight had to be when one of the males decided the pole that was probably no more than 5 feet away from the passenger door was the pole he needed to use as a scratching pole. Mind you, we've got the windows down as he sauntered up. We got a good 30 second video of him scratching his belly/chest on the pole. My wife and I had the exact same thought of "when do you roll up the window!?!?!". He definitely got his head close enough where you likely could have reached out an touched him from the passenger seat! 2nd to last pic below is the best one we got while taking the video.
We finally made the call to head on down the loop and finish it up because people were getting hungry. One more short detour down a side road to watch a couple of males in a nice standoff in the middle of the road. One of em kept trying to get the other to fight, but the 2nd one really wasn't having any of it. One quick headbutt and they eventually wandered off the road so we could continue.


















And that's all for the trip report. Between 2 phones, a DSLR, and the 3 of us in our family, we took 1700 photos. And we don't take as many as my brother in-law and my wife's parents! I don't even want to think about how many they took.
Thanks for all the kind comments. Happy to answer any questions about the trip.
We've got another longer trip planned to southern Utah in September, and I'll plan on doing the same thing and post it up here for everyone.