As mentioned earlier, badlands park. It’s too cool a place to not go if you’re already at Rushmore. We had mule deer/buffalo/bighorn sheep within spitting distance of the vehicle. And some of that terrain/scenery is pretty otherworldly. I have no suggestion for lodging though.
Neat place, to many tourest, especially during Sturgis. motorcycle rally, standing room only. The best ting we saw there was Custer State Park Drive, and Devils Tower!
Wind Cave is worth a visit, especially on a hot day. And the SD Air & Space museum, just outside Ellsworth AFB, is pretty interesting.
The Cody Museum. Tghe badlands are cool. Wall drug is interesting in a touristy way. There was a bear park at one time, you could drive through it and there was a walk through in it where you could see but not touch babies.
Crazy horse wasn’t close to finished when I was there and you had to sit through a propaganda film to ride the cars to get close to it. There is or was an overpass on the highway constructed of wood that was cool. We came back through Yellowstone.
Crazy horse wasn’t close to finished when I was there and you had to sit through a propaganda film to ride the cars to get close to it. There is or was an overpass on the highway constructed of wood that was cool. We came back through Yellowstone.
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Oh by the way when you leave the Rushmore visitor center if you walk to the left, it a lot shorter and not as many stairs but you miss a museum with the tools and stuff.
If you are into caverns, there is also one called Jewel Cave. The last time we were up there (last year, I think), our son went along and wanted to go through both Jewel Cave and Wind Cave. I'm not a caver, but they were still nice to visit.
I really need to make this trip this summer.
Never been but done a fair amount of research on the Black Hills. We did about 10 years straight every summer in Montana but been a couple years since we've been back. We wanted our next summer vacation to be THe Black Hills area. THere seems to be a dozen or more really great places/monumnets/parks to visit. We started looking at VRBOs for this summer but didn't start the search until about 6 weeks ago. There were a lot of rentals that would have fit our needs/wants but none available for our available times. Seems to get a nice place for a 7-10 days stay you really need to book well in advance. Also looked at renting an RV but most of the RV parks recommended were already sold out. We'll plan earlier for Summer 2024 so we are going to Hawaii instead.
We did the black hills and Mt Rushmore two years ago spending over a week in the RV at a private park.
Amazing area that we will visit again as we didn’t get to see it all in a week.
Amazing area that we will visit again as we didn’t get to see it all in a week.
