Hidden Treasures in One Underrated State
South Dakota is such an awesome state! We got a lot of strange looks when we mentioned we were making South Dakota the highlight of a 2 week road trip, but we were so impressed. It has National Parks, amazing hiking, animals and strange roadside attractions! A highlight for us was the Black Hills area and Spearfish Canyon. The nature here is really beautiful. We are excited to share with you all that we did while in the amazing state of South Dakota!
This trip was taken July 2023.
Our South Dakota Itinerary:
- Day 1: Sioux Falls
- Day 2: Roadside Attractions and Badlands Day 1
- Day 3: Badlands National Park and Rapid City
- Day 4: Custer Wildlife Loop and Wind Cave National Park
- Day 5: Needles Highway, Hiking and Mt Rushmore
- Day 6: Spearfish Canyon and Deadwood
Day 1: Sioux Falls
Our first evening in South Dakota (coming up via Omaha) was in Sioux Falls. We were so impressed with how nice this town was. We stayed in a nice hotel right along the river, the Hilton Garden Inn. It was walking distance to the downtown area, which we visited later in the evening.
We first visited Falls Park where we could get up close to some beautiful waterfalls. It was fun to be able to walk along the flat rocks to different vantage points. For dinner, we went to Papa Woody’s Pizza which was delicious, and next door grabbed some cotton candy which was fun!
In the evening, we walked from our hotel up through the town to some shops.
Day 2: Roadside Attractions and Badlands Day 1
The next day we started our journey across South Dakota which included a bunch of road side attractions. Spread across ten acres of land, Porter Sculpture Park features over 50 striking and imaginative sculptures crafted from salvaged metal materials.
We then stopped at the worlds only corn palace which has been around for over 100 years and is redecorated with corn every single year. We saw an archeological site that houses remains from a prehistoric indian village from over 1000 years ago. We also saw tiny church and a giant dinosaur skeleton walking a skeleton man before stopping at the 1880 town.
At the 1880 town, we were able to visit a collection of over 30 buildings ranging from a jail, a saloon, a post office and a school. Each building and its contents are authentic and had been brought there to construct the entire town. They also had a visitor center which had many pieces of memorabilia from Dances with Wolves, which was filmed in numerous areas in South Dakota.
On our way to the Badlands, we stopped at the Badlands Ranch Store to see some Prairie Dogs. You can buy a bag of unsalted peanuts for $1 and feed them. We felt a little guilty after our Gypsy Guide later told us that feeding them isn’t advised and Prairie Dogs carried the plague.
Finally we made it to Badlands National Park. It was a very hot 103 degrees when we entered the badlands, so we saved our hikes for the later evening and early morning. We started with The Door Trail which was a really neat trail. The trail starts on a flat boardwalk which leads to “the Door” which is a notch in the badlands wall that serves as a gateway to a stunning panoramic view of the surrounding landscape. You can continue to the side of the door which leads away from the boardwalk and across rugged rock formations and dusty terrain. This part of the trail is not well-defined, but does have mile markers so one can easily find their way along the approximate 1 mile out and back trail.
The very short window trail, the door trail while allowed us to walk on top of some of the formations at sunset. Was great to do this in the evening, then we went back to the Cedar Pass lodge for the night and really enjoyed staying in the park.
Day 3: Badlands National Park and Rapid City
We woke up early to do the notch trail the next morning. The notch trail was about a 1.5 mile trail which had a ladder to the top! It was a little sketchy but pretty doable. Glad we did it in the morning as it started getting more crowded. The whole area is just so interesting because the rock formations are beautiful, but you can also just wander out amongst the various formations.
We then did the scenic loop and really enjoyed it. We made a few stops at overlooks. We also used the Gypsey Guide – which I think is GuideAlong now which was great and gave us some good info and told us good places to stop. The only place we stopped at that wasn’t that great was the Prairie Dog area – it was down a long gravel drive, kind of out of the way, and when we were there, we hardly saw any – we saw more at that little general store on the way in. It might not always be like that – but we were kind of disappointed when we got there.
For lunch we headed to the small town of Wall. This town was made famous by the addition of Waldrug, which is a famous tourist attraction that has food and shopping. We got lunch, did some shopping and had a lot of fun.
In the evening we ended in Rapid City – first visiting Bear Country USA where we saw 15 different species of animals wandering through the property, and then enjoying a nice dinner and walking around town seeing the presidential statues on every block. We stayed for the night in the haunted Alex Johnson hotel, which is over 75 years old and has hosted 6 presidents, and other famous characters such as Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Motley Crue, John McCain, Sugar Ray Robinson, Buzz Aldrin, Kevin Costner, Elton John, Elisabeth Shue, Margaret Thatcher, and more. Rapid City was a nice town, and we enjoyed how walkable it was. We stopped to get pizza and ice cream and enjoy the park in the center of town.
Day 4: Custer Wildlife Loop and Wind Cave National Park
During the morning we drove through the Custer State Park Wildlife Loop. This road drove us through miles of prairie and rolling hills where we came across pronghorn, prairie dogs and a herd of bison! The park has up to 1400 bison, which is one of the largest herds in the world.
We visited the mammoth dig site in Hot Springs South Dakota which was a short stop and very cool. We then booked it up to Wind Cave, where we were not sure we were going to do a tour, but during the day decided we really should while we are there. We were able to book a tour on site which was good. Tour was 1.25hrs and really interesting and glad we did it.
For the next 3 days we spent time at the Mt Rushmore KOA where the kids had fun each evening swimming, playing basketball, bouncing on the jump pad or going down the waterslide. This was a great central location for our family to stay with lots for the kids to do. Our kids still talk about this being one of the best hotels ever. It might be the nicest KOA in the country 😀 The hotel itself was nice, and we enjoyed the option of a hotel within the KOA. It looked right out onto one of the pools. They also had a pancake breakfast in the morning and a taco bar at night.
Day 5: Needles Highway, Hiking and Mt Rushmore
Early the next morning we headed up to the needles highway and drove through the needles eye tunnel. We then stopped and hiked the 1.8mi Cathedral Spires trail which took us on a beautiful tour of the granite spires, through pine forests and climbing over rock formations, opening up to an expansive view of the cathedral spires at the end. This was a great trail that the whole family loved.
We spend the afternoon having a picnic, swimming and doing a hike around Sylvan Lake. It was gorgeous and was very popular. Finding parking here was kind of tricky. We walked around the lake and the hike was OK, but we probably could have just found a spot to swim and skipped the ‘hike’. We brought towels and food and swimming stuff and found a spot in the grass to hang out. They also had some cliff jumping as well which was fun. Lots of people seemed to hang out there all day and had floats as well.
In the afternoon, we went to the Crazy Horse monument. It looked cool, but we were super impressed when we got there. There was a very interesting, meaningful video in the visitor center to walk. They also had a really nice museum with lots to see, and some nice viewing platforms. We loved this story and the kids enjoyed this stop a lot.
In the morning we visited Mt Rushmore. This was nice, and we did the mile long walk that led up closer to the carvings which is cool. It was quite a bit of stairs. We especially enjoyed that they had someone from one of the local tribes come to perform a traditional dance and also talk about how this monument was carved from rock and land her people had believed to be sacred for thousands of years. It was a good way to help commemorate some of the wrong that was done by creating this monument.
We drove more of the needles highway today which took us through pine forests, windy roads and many tunnels. We then took the kids to an alpine slide (overpriced but fun) and visited the presidential wax museum (decent but some of the history involving native peoples was very whitewashed).
In the evening we rented an ATV from our KOA that took us out on some trails to an old gold mine where we could see the mine and the living quarters for those that worked there. We saw almost no one else on this journey and it was fun to have a hike all to ourselves.
Day 6: Spearfish Canyon and Deadwood
We then drove the scenic drive of Spearfish Canyon which took us by many waterfalls and through 1000 foot cliffs. We took a few hikes to see Roughlock Falls, and Spearfish Falls. Both were easy hikes but had great waterfalls to see.
We then took a hike along Spearfish Creek to get to Devil’s Bathtub, which was a fun hike, making over a dozen back and forth river crossings before ending in a natural waterslide. The Trail is relatively short at 1.5 miles roundtrip but takes a little longer than usual as there are numerous creek crossings. The highlight of the hike is the bathtub itself, which is a natural pool formed in the rock from thousands of years of cascading water. The water is clear and inviting, but it was probably about 55 degrees which is why there weren’t many people going down the natural slide.
After that we made a picnic, got some much needed ice cream and the visited the DC booth fish hatchery which is one of the oldest in the nation, opened in 1896. We could see the thousands of fish they use to populate local rivers. They also have a replica fish car that was used to transport fish in refrigerated bins throughout the country.
On our way to Deadwood, We stopped at the homestake mine in Lead SD. Until it closed in 2002 it was the largest and deepest gold mine in North America. It has hundreds of miles of mines, some stretching as deep at 8000 feet underground and produced over 40 Million oz of gold in its lifetime.
In the evening we stayed in Deadwood which is an old wild west town. It was fun, we got some feedback that it’s not a great place to stay but we liked it. It was … different …. But we enjoyed it 🙂
