South Dakota Black Hills - April 27th to 29th, 2022
The Black Hills of South Dakota is a wonderful destination. There is plenty to see and do. We had reservations for three nights inside Custer State Park to give us time to enjoy exploring the area.
Wednesday we moved from Chamberlain, South Dakota to Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was a cold morning, but it warmed up nicely in the afternoon. We arrived at Custer State Park around lunch time. There is a $20 entrance fee per vehicle to get into the park, even if you have campground reservations. That is a rather expensive fee, but it is good for seven days. However, a yearly pass was only $36. Since we were planning on staying inside the park on our way back from Alaska along with staying a couple nights at another South Dakota state park, we opted for the annual pass.
Our reservation was for three nights in the Game Lodge Campground. It is just inside the east entrance to the park. Just after we entered the park, we saw a few buffalo. In fact, we had to wait for one to cross the road in front of us.
The campground is not far off route 16A, just far enough so the traffic noise is not annoying. Our site backed up to a small stream.
After eating our lunch and relaxing by the sound of the stream, Ann talked Keith into going for a hike. Keith does not like to do much on travel days, as he likes to relax after driving for hours. However, the good weather days were forecasted to be Wednesday and Thursday, with rain coming in on Friday. Ann wanted to visit Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse on Thursday, which only left Wednesday afternoon to go on a hike. She was thankful that Keith agreed to go, even though she was prepared to hike by herself.
The trailhead for the Lover’s Leap Trail is only half a mile from the campground. Have we ever mentioned that we like having trails we can reach from the campground? It is so nice not to pack up and drive to a trailhead. Lover’s Leap is a four mile trail. As we headed over to the trailhead, we passed by a group of big horn sheep along the side of the road.
Lover’s Leap is a wonderful trail. It is mostly a pleasant walk through the woods with some interesting rock formations along the way. Taking the loop in the clockwise direction, most of the elevation gain is in the first mile. Silica is scattered along the trail, making it sparkle in the sunlight. There are nice views from the high point of the trail. From there it is a gradual decent. For about half a mile, the trail follows a stream, filling the air with the wonderful sound of the water flowing over the rocks. The trail criss-crosses over the stream on small foot bridges, so you can get a glimpse of small fish darting around in the water. Rocky cliffs rising up beside the trail add even more beautiful scenery to stare at.
Ann was feeling great on the trail. It was the first time since her fall in Shades State Park that she could hike without pain (Shades State Park, Indiana - April 6th to 7th, 2022). No pain when taking long strides. No pain when going up or down steep grades. No pain when making a high step up or down. That is not to say that her tail bone is completely healed, but Ann felt like she could keep up her normal hiking pace. Now the only thing slowing us down was how often she stopped to take pictures.
We completed the five miles with an elevation gain of 614 feet in about two and a half hours. This was hike number ten of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2022. We made it back to our camp site with plenty of time to cook dinner.
Thursday was spent doing “touristy” things. We drove up Iron Mountain Road Scenic Drive to Mount Rushmore National Memorial. It is definitely a scenic drive. As we wound through the Black Hills, we left Custer State Park. Right when we entered the Black Hills National Forest, we stopped at a pull-out for our first glimpse of Mount Rushmore in the distance. It was the first of many views of the memorial along the scenic drive. Another great stop was Norbeck Overlook. Peter Norbeck was a South Dakota governor and U.S. Senator who encouraged the development of Custer State Park and the scenic drives within the park.
There are three tunnels near the end of Iron Mountain Road. You need to research the size of these tunnels to make sure your vehicle will fit through them before attempting this drive. According to the state park magazine we received when entering the park, the shortest tunnel is 11 feet tall. However, we’ve seen different numbers posted in different places. Our Red Tail Lodge is just under 10 feet tall, so we had no problems going through the tunnels.
It was a beautiful sunny day to see Mount Rushmore National Memorial. We’ve been here once before, right before sunset, with not very good lighting, so this time was a real treat. The Avenue of Flags frames in the monument, with the flags of all 50 states plus those of all the territories and commonwealths of the United States. Just under the Grand View Terrace is the Lincoln Borglum Visitor Center. Inside is a small museum and a couple of theaters. The park move explaining why and how the monument was constructed is well worth your time.
The Presidential Trail is a short, paved loop that goes right up to the base of the mountain. There are multiple views of the monument along the path, each from a different angle. Also along the trail are informational signs containing short biographies of the four presidents.
The walking path also goes by the Sculptor’s Studio. The studio was not open when we were there, but, from peering in the windows, it looks like there are scale models of the monument inside. Right next to the studio is the air compressor that was used to power the jack hammers during the sculpting of the mountain.
After exploring the complex, we went back to our Red Tail Lodge (our van) to eat lunch. Have we already said how much we like having everything with us when we travel? For dessert, we headed back to Carver’s Cafe and Ice Cream at the monument to have ice cream. They claim the vanilla ice cream is made using Thomas Jefferson’s recipe. So, naturally, we had to order the vanilla. Ann had a scoop of mint chocolate along with here vanilla while Keith had chocolate and vanilla. The vanilla was pretty rich and tasted more like a custard, with eggs. Later we looked up Thomas Jefferson’s ice cream recipe. He is credited with the first known ice cream recipe recorded by an American. And yes, the recipe contains egg yolks.
Next on our agenda for the day was visiting the Crazy Horse Memorial. Chief Henry Standing Bear asked renowned sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to carve Crazy Horse in the Black Hills. Korczak, at the age of 40, began the project that he worked on for the rest of his life. Because of the scale of the project, and refusing to accept any government funds to finance the project, he knew it would not be completed in his lifetime. Some of his children and grandchildren still work at the memorial.
But the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation is more than just making progress on a huge mountain carving. Its mission is to protect and preserve the culture, tradition and living heritage of the North American Indians. It provides educational and cultural programming along with a repository for American Indian artifacts, arts and crafts at the Indian Museum of North America and the Native American Educational and Cultural Center which are part of the Visitor Complex. They also operate the Indian University of North America. The Visitor Complex also includes the log home of the Ziolkowski family. We found the orientation film in the twin theaters very worthwhile. For an additional fee, you can ride a bus from the Visitor Complex over to the base of the mountain, 3/4 of a mile away. We decided not to take the bus tour, so we cannot comment on it.
By the time we returned to the campground, we had a little bit of time before dinner to sit by the creek, relaxing, enjoying the gurgling sounds of the water and the warm temperatures of the day.
It was not raining Friday morning, so we went for a walk before lunch. The Custer State Park Visitor Center is just across the street from Game Lodge Campground, the one we were staying in. We were impressed with the park movie which is shown in a large screen theater inside the visitor center. We were not planning on doing much else within the park this visit since it was supposed to rain all afternoon and we were leaving the following morning. However, we wanted to gather some more information for our next planned visit in October. The ranger provided us with a nice map of the major hiking trails within the park.
After a lengthy conversation with a couple of the rangers, we were still not able to determine if our van would make it through all of the tunnels along the Needles Highway. We found three different sets of numbers for the height clearances. The two tunnels in question were the Needles Eye Tunnel just to the east of Sylvan Lake and the Hood Tunnel just to the west of Sylvan Lake. The park magazine lists those tunnels with a height restriction of 9’ 9” and 9’ 8” respectively which is too short for our almost 10’ tall van. However, the hiking map lists those tunnels as 12’ and 10’ 7” tall. The map posted on the wall inside the visitor center agreed with the hiking map. That’s a big discrepancy, between one to two feet! We would like to experience the Needles scenic drive, but we are not ready to risk damaging our van or getting our van stuck in one of the tunnels. That could be a rather expensive incident.
From the visitor center, we walked the Creekside Trail over to the Coolidge General Store. The trail pretty much follows the road, but it is a relaxing walk just the same. The meadow between the campground and the road appears to be a popular hangout for the bison, as indicated by the number of bison patties littering the grass. Then the meadow across the road from the Peter Norbeck Outdoor Education Center is where the big horn sheep like to graze. There was a group of them there the whole time we were on our walk.
After purchasing a couple of items from the General Store, we started back towards the campground. It was not quite noon yet, but it was already starting to lightly rain. It’s a good thing we brought our rain jackets with us.
It rained pretty hard the rest of the day, so we hung out inside our Red Tail Lodge (our van). On one of Ann’s trips to the restroom during one of the lulls in the rain, she spotted a heron in one of the ponds. Of course she ran back to the van for her camera. Luckily the heron was still there when she got back. The heron didn’t look familiar to her, but, after studying her pictures later, she believes it was a Great Blue Heron. However, she has never seen one crouched down like that before. She normally sees them standing up tall, so you can see how long their necks are. Ann guesses he was scrunching down because of the rain. We would imagine that it would be hard to see into the water to fish with the rain drops rippling the surface of the water.
Having three nights inside Custer State Park gave us the time we needed to work around the weather. However, there is still more of the Black Hills to explore and more trails to hike. We will be back.
Check out our related video: South Dakota Black HIlls
(Ann)