We drove a bit more than 30 minutes to the town of Keystone, which is the gateway town to Mount Rushmore. It is a typical tourist town with many hotels, restaurants, and shops. Areas in and nearby Keystone have tourist attractions such as an outdoor adventure park with ziplines, alpine slide and an aerial course. There is a gold mine for panning, and a few museums to visit as well. We didn’t do any of these things, but they looked and sounded fun.
After dinner we did the drive to see Mount Rushmore at night- it is open until 11pm!! You get to drive through a few stone tunnels on the way to this National Monument- each tunnel frames the heads on Mount Rushmore.
I loved the illuminated presidential heads of Mount Rushmore at night. It was also awesome that there weren’t many visitors enjoying this with us!
The next day we drove part of the Peter Norbeck Scenic byway -16A. This road includes “car only” tunnels (no RVs). This drive is incredible, and is not to be missed.
Our first adventure was Cathedral Spires Trail hike, which is one of these prettiest trails I have ever hiked. I would rank it as moderately hard. I was glad to have my hiking pole for the two short, but intense sections of the trail.
Next we went on to Sylvan Lake to do a childhood picture re-creation (I was at Sylvan Lake when I was 8)
We ate lunch at Custer State Park Game Lodge. Calvin Coolidge spent 3 months in this lodge- my husband is a huge Calvin Coolidge fan- so it was a must visit for Sid.
We checked into a really great rental cabin, nine miles south of Custer. We loved that the host provided wood for nightly fires in a fire ring as we watched the stars come out in the big night sky.
The next day our intention was to go to Wind Cave National Park. But the tickets were sold out. I should have reserved in advance- I guess we weren’t off season enough. Instead, we hiked around the visitor center (just an okay walk) and then drove the roads around the park looking at all the bison.
(USA does not have buffalo- we have bison).
We ended up having such a great time hiking the Cold Brook Canyon Trail- keeping our distance from the buffalo hanging out at the beginning of the trail.
That afternoon we went to a beautiful hot spring spa- Moccasin Springs. It was awesome, so awesome in fact that I am glad we didn’t manage to get afternoon tickets to The Wind Cave! This was so much better than a cave!
On our way to Spearfish Canyon we went to Deadwood and it was underwhelming.
So we continued to Lead (pronounced LEED) and visited the Sandford Lab Homestake Visitor Center.. We loved this place. This used to be a gold mine (helped to make the Hearst family rich). It has been turned into a scientific research lab studying neutrino physics- it sounds complicated but the museum explains it all to you with great displays. I learned so much about how an 8000 ft deep hole can be essential for conducting scientific experiments.
Spearfish Canyon was next place on the agenda. We stayed at the wonderful Spearfish Lodge for 2 nights. This lodge has a wonderful lobby and restaurant. They also rent ATVs for exploring logging roads.
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| The lodge has a beautiful lobby |
We drove our rental car down dirt road 222 next to the lodge and saw the spot where they filmed some of the scenes in the movie “Dances With Wolves”. We also saw a “tree blow down”- acres and acres of trees just blown down from 80 mph winds in 2017. I had never seen such a phenomenon.
On the Spearfish Lodge’s property were the trailheads for the 2 hikes we choose.
Roughlock Falls Trail
Little Spearfish Falls Trail
For our full day in this area of South Dakota, we decided to drive an hour west into Wyoming to see Devil’s Tower- I absolutely loved the 1.3 mile hike around the bottom of the tower. It is paved. You can see climbers on the Tower if you look hard enough. You would never catch me doing that, even in my younger days.
Then we said goodbye to beautiful Spearfish Canyon and headed out in the morning for a 4 hour drive to North Dakota. I rented one of the 4 Wannagan Creek Cabins. These are cabins on private land INSIDE Teddy Roosevelt National Park. These cabins were remote- we loved them!! We stayed here for 3 nights. We had to buy all our groceries in Dickinson ND, an hour before getting to the cabin. Medora only has a few restaurants and convenience stores and no grocery store (2021)
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| view from cabin porch |
There are 2 sections to Teddy Roosevelt NP, The North Unit and the South Unit. This park is geographically very large (70,000acres), but there are not many roads or trails, just the open plains, buttes, cliffs and stunning rock formations.
We were staying in the south unit so we explored this larger unit on our first full day. We did several small hikes- all around a mile. These hikes included the Painted Canyon Nature Trail, The Little Missouri River Trail (where we dipped our feet in the river) The Boincourt Overlook Trail and The Old East Entrance Trail.
On our second full day we drove US-85 to the North Unit. We stopped to see the cannonball rock formations.
We hiked the 4.4 mile Caprock Coulee Trail. The views were great- the bison at the trail head made us do the loop trail in reverse- we were not about to step in between the bison and there was no way to skirt around them . You only see one bison here- but there were about 7 of them.
We liked the North Unit better than the south unit because the hiking was better.
On our third day we stopped at the Visitor’s center. We drove the whole scenic road seeing wild horses and tons of prairie dogs.
We visited Teddy Roosevelt’s temporary cabin when he was in this area in the late 1800’s.
Then we drove around Medora. There was not much to do in this town, but we found a great bar, with a wonderful bartender and whiled away the afternoon with burgers and beers.
Medora does have a big outdoor theater with a summer musical- aptly called- “Medora The Musical”. Unfortunately, we were not there during the show’s season ☹ But if you are going during the summer, please buy your tickets in advance! Below is a photo I grabbed off the internet of the musical.
We stopped at Wall Drug (never need to do this town again- such a tourist trap)
Inside Badlands National Park, I booked the Cedar Pass Lodge Cabins for 2 nights . I booked them WAY WAY WAY in advance. The cabins had a small frig and a microwave. They had just been redone and had comfy beds and a great porch. Due to COVID the restaurant had short hours and take-out only, so we just got soup, salad mixes and sandwich fixings at a grocery store before entering the park, so we wouldn’t have to worry about food. It is worth it to be inside the park for the sunrises and sunsets!
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| view from our porch |
Our favorite trail was the Notch Trail – with a cool ladder and a great overlook- but watch out because a rattle snake was slithering across the sand under the ladder! We just waited for him to be far far away!
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| end of the trail |
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| yes, we stayed right |
We walked the ½ mile Fossil Exhibit Trail (replica fossils- but still a good learning point) and then did the Castle Trail 3 miles out and back
The Window Trail- 0.2 miles- on a boardwalk- it leads to a nice viewpoint with 2 benches
The Door Trail- 0.75 – meanders through rock formations
In the badlands you can hike off trail, so we did a bit of rock scrambling to get to great viewpoints for the sunset.
I could have easily spent 2 more nights (4 nights total) to really do the park justice. My advice is to NEVER just do Badlands NP in one day because the best time to see its beauty is at dawn and dusk. The rocks literally change color as the sun rises and sets. SPECTACULAR
My other piece of advice is to take the time to sit still and look carefully. If we hadn’t taken time to really slow down, we would have missed the Big Horn sheep and all the baby big horns scampering high above, on precarious ridge. As a mom, it scared me to watch those babies running on loose rocks at full tilt speed.
On our way out of the park we stopped in at the Minute Man Missile Visitors Center. It was a well done. I loved all the displays, especially the old TV playing the duck and cover drill song, sung by the turtle.
And suddenly it was time to leave the Dakotas behind. North Dakota was my 49th state to visit- I was really surprised how much I loved the Dakotas! I can help you book a trip like this!!
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