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.
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.