South Dakota - Blackhills and Badlands
To start, South Dakota is SUPER awesome and we could have easily spent more time there.
There are Bison everywhere, one of my personal favorite creatures, and prairie dogs, and I'm sure other things but those were the two I concentrated on.
On our way to SD we drove through a few states and tried to get all the pictures of the signs:
This has been ridiculously harder than you would think. Sometimes we can't pull over, sometimes we miss it, and sometimes we have to flip a u-y at the end of the state line to get the picture of the one we're leaving and take a picture of the one were entering.
We had a few places we wanted to stop in Nebraska on the way, Chimney Rock and Carhenge. Chimney Rock was about a 3 hour detour for us and this is as close as you can get:
The rock itself is a national park...the land surrounding it is privately owned. If you happen to be all the way here in Nebraska stop by and see it, if not, its so not worth a large detour.
BUT, this did get us closer to the coolest thing every...Carhenge! If you guessed correctly, then yes, it is Stonehenge made entirely out of cars:
Someone who was originally from this town decided to come back and build this after living in Britain. It's a masterpiece and it should go on Nebraska's state quarter.
There's also a car you can sign, so we made sure to leave our mark. But since all the dates we're from June '18 or later I'm sure this will get painted over pretty soon:
We got to South Dakota late that day and stayed at Elk Mountain Campground ($18 FCFS sites). Super nice campground with lots of grass and right next to Wind Cave National Park.
South Dakota had a ton to do - we spent the week doing cave tours, hiking, and paying a hefty chunk of change for monuments and activities.
Caves - we did a tour of both Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, both of which are pretty cheap at 12 dollars a person. They are very different looking caves, I recommend going to both:
We spent the next few days visiting the sites around here, including Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Bear Country USA, and Prairie Berry Winery. An overview for these activities -
Mt. Rushmore is cool, free except for $10 dollar parking, worth it to take the half hour and stop off.
Crazy Horse is another $12 dollars a person, the monument is not done so you're essentially paying for construction on it and you can't get very close to it.
Bear Country USA - really awesome experience, drive through zoo with tons of bears and other animal.
Prairie Berry Winery is super nice, we got to try around 20 different wines FOR FREE and they let you open your bottles on their patio and enjoy a nice drink.
If you get a chance to visit South Dakota, we had another amazing camping experience at Game Lodge in Custer State Park. Centrally located, only 26 dollars a night and includes showers(!!!) and super nice campsites.
We moved on from the Blackhills to Badlands, where I was super excited to see more Bison.
The landscape is a bit dull on the drive away from the mountains through South Dakota. On the side of the road were signs advertising a store in Wall, SD so we thought we'd stop by and check it out. Turns out the entire town revolves around this store, with various storefronts resembling an old western movie. We stopped in for breakfast and had the best steak and eggs of our life.
Badlands is a short drive south of Wall, and the day was ridiculously hot in the upper 90's. Average for the time is around high seventies so we got...lucky. We still managed a bit of hiking but were pretty done by early afternoon
That night we were supposed to stay at a free campsite just outside the park, Sage Creek. This campsite is known for having buffalo roam through it, and has been top of my list for a long time.
Unfortunately we were hovering around 98 degrees and it was only 3 o clock. I had no desire to sit in a chair for the next 5 hours waiting for the sun to go down and hoping for a light breeze. We ended up continuing our drive east towards Minneapolis where we'd be spending the next few days.
At this point we'd spent quite a bit of money on activities and *ahem* booze, and decided to find a free campsite on the way. Turns out, the second you start driving away from the west, free campsites are few and far between. Freecampsites.net, our go to source, mostly listed parking lots and truck stops, great if you have an RV, not if you have a tent.
If we do a short overnight stop we tend to just sleep in the back of the car, but this means we need a safe enough place to take everything out of the car and pile it on the ground without thinking it won't be there in the morning. After searching for a while I started to notice a pattern of public parks being listed as okay to camp in. When in Rome right? Feeling extremely uncomfortable we pulled up to a park at the very eastern end of Nebraska at 10 at night and found a sign labeling "campers welcome". Towards the back of the park were 5 or 6 RVs camped out for the night so we threw caution to the wind and setup the back of the car. This turned into the hottest, longest, most uncomfortable night of my life. There were too many bugs to crack the windows more than a millimeter and the temperate only dropped 10 degrees overnight. 10 DEGREES.
We rushed out in the morning and completed the drive to Minneapolis. Thus ends the first half of camping on our trip and starts the three week break IN HOTELS. Can you tell were excited?
There are Bison everywhere, one of my personal favorite creatures, and prairie dogs, and I'm sure other things but those were the two I concentrated on.
On our way to SD we drove through a few states and tried to get all the pictures of the signs:
This has been ridiculously harder than you would think. Sometimes we can't pull over, sometimes we miss it, and sometimes we have to flip a u-y at the end of the state line to get the picture of the one we're leaving and take a picture of the one were entering.
We had a few places we wanted to stop in Nebraska on the way, Chimney Rock and Carhenge. Chimney Rock was about a 3 hour detour for us and this is as close as you can get:
BUT, this did get us closer to the coolest thing every...Carhenge! If you guessed correctly, then yes, it is Stonehenge made entirely out of cars:
Someone who was originally from this town decided to come back and build this after living in Britain. It's a masterpiece and it should go on Nebraska's state quarter.
There's also a car you can sign, so we made sure to leave our mark. But since all the dates we're from June '18 or later I'm sure this will get painted over pretty soon:
We got to South Dakota late that day and stayed at Elk Mountain Campground ($18 FCFS sites). Super nice campground with lots of grass and right next to Wind Cave National Park.
South Dakota had a ton to do - we spent the week doing cave tours, hiking, and paying a hefty chunk of change for monuments and activities.
Caves - we did a tour of both Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, both of which are pretty cheap at 12 dollars a person. They are very different looking caves, I recommend going to both:
Wind Cave:
Jewel Cave:
We hiked to the highest point in South Dakota, which coincidentally is the highest point east until you hit the Pyrenees. Insane right? The trail itself is only 6.8 miles and highest elevation is 7,242. The hike is gorgeous and ends at a super cool watchtower that overlooks the Black Hills:
We spent the next few days visiting the sites around here, including Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Bear Country USA, and Prairie Berry Winery. An overview for these activities -
Mt. Rushmore is cool, free except for $10 dollar parking, worth it to take the half hour and stop off.
Crazy Horse is another $12 dollars a person, the monument is not done so you're essentially paying for construction on it and you can't get very close to it.
Bear Country USA - really awesome experience, drive through zoo with tons of bears and other animal.
Prairie Berry Winery is super nice, we got to try around 20 different wines FOR FREE and they let you open your bottles on their patio and enjoy a nice drink.
We moved on from the Blackhills to Badlands, where I was super excited to see more Bison.
The landscape is a bit dull on the drive away from the mountains through South Dakota. On the side of the road were signs advertising a store in Wall, SD so we thought we'd stop by and check it out. Turns out the entire town revolves around this store, with various storefronts resembling an old western movie. We stopped in for breakfast and had the best steak and eggs of our life.
Badlands is a short drive south of Wall, and the day was ridiculously hot in the upper 90's. Average for the time is around high seventies so we got...lucky. We still managed a bit of hiking but were pretty done by early afternoon
That night we were supposed to stay at a free campsite just outside the park, Sage Creek. This campsite is known for having buffalo roam through it, and has been top of my list for a long time.
Unfortunately we were hovering around 98 degrees and it was only 3 o clock. I had no desire to sit in a chair for the next 5 hours waiting for the sun to go down and hoping for a light breeze. We ended up continuing our drive east towards Minneapolis where we'd be spending the next few days.
At this point we'd spent quite a bit of money on activities and *ahem* booze, and decided to find a free campsite on the way. Turns out, the second you start driving away from the west, free campsites are few and far between. Freecampsites.net, our go to source, mostly listed parking lots and truck stops, great if you have an RV, not if you have a tent.
If we do a short overnight stop we tend to just sleep in the back of the car, but this means we need a safe enough place to take everything out of the car and pile it on the ground without thinking it won't be there in the morning. After searching for a while I started to notice a pattern of public parks being listed as okay to camp in. When in Rome right? Feeling extremely uncomfortable we pulled up to a park at the very eastern end of Nebraska at 10 at night and found a sign labeling "campers welcome". Towards the back of the park were 5 or 6 RVs camped out for the night so we threw caution to the wind and setup the back of the car. This turned into the hottest, longest, most uncomfortable night of my life. There were too many bugs to crack the windows more than a millimeter and the temperate only dropped 10 degrees overnight. 10 DEGREES.
We rushed out in the morning and completed the drive to Minneapolis. Thus ends the first half of camping on our trip and starts the three week break IN HOTELS. Can you tell were excited?
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