Cluster Cities - Rapid City

Every once in a while, there is a city with several attractions in or around the city itself.  One of those cities is Rapid City, South Dakota.

You're probably thinking Rapid City?????

A few years ago, we took a camping trip.  We spent several days in and around Rapid City.  This is a jewel located in the Black Hills region.

Our first stop in South Dakota was the night of July 4, we stopped at Rosebud Sioux Reservation and watched the fireworks.  From there we went to Wall, South Dakota where we spent the night.

Wall is famous for the Wall Drug Store.  It is a tourist trap to the max, but fun.  It is a small mall that sells everything Black Hills.

From there, we left and went to the Badlands National Park.  The park itself is relatively small, but impressive.  Driving west on I90, it seems to raise up out of nowhere.  My children had a great time climbing the hills and running the trails.  We spent about 4 hours at the park.







 From Badlands, we went to Wind Cave National Park.  We camped at the park, which has numerous tours including a night tour with only candles.  We took a daylight tour which explained how wind formed the cave.  At night, the park rangers (great guys!) had a "fireside chat"  as part of their educational program.  They told us how the cave was formed and about the wildlife in the area as well several funny stories.

One of my favorite stories was about how he (the park ranger) was going through files and he saw one marked Bison jumps over VW.  He said he had to look at the pictures only to realize the bison did jump over the car - all over it.

We were advised to avoid contact with the bison because they were caring for their young and could be dangerous.  We did manage to see one in the park from a distance.

The next morning, we took a drive thru the Custer State park and what was referred to as the Custer byway.  Definitely worth the time, it includes mountains, 1 lane tunnel bridges and numerous scenic outlooks and photo opportunities  In addition, bison can be seen at numerous times, but of course they vanished when we were there.  This was followed by a quick trip to Jewel Cave.  A nice monument to see but the entire visit only took about 3-4 hours.  After that we doubled back and went north to Keystone and camped out near Mount Rushmore.



Mount Rushmore National Monument is impressive. I found it a little odd.  People were just sitting there looking at it as if they expected the leaders there to start speaking.  Beyond that, I would say that everyone should visit there at least once in there life.  I have a picture, which shows the ranger pick up that I had at the time below Washington's head.  It shows the shear size of the sculpture. There are tours offered that take you closer to the sculpture which I wouldn't mind going back to do now that my children are older.  After leaving Mount Rushmore, we stopped at the Crazy Horse Memorial.


Our last part of the trip took us a little over two hours west.  We spent the last two days of our trip at Devil's Tower National Monument.   We drove west on I90, then took 116 north.  We stayed at the KOA just outside the monument.  Every night, they played the movie, Close Encounter of the Third Kind.  It was a little eerie, looking up at the monument at dusk hearing John Williams score.  The monument itself, has a winding road with forested area's from which the monument itself peaks through.  The trails around the monument itself is frequented by climbers.  It's amazing to see them work their way up several hundred feet.

I definitely recommend the trip.  From South Texas, it took about 2 days to make the journey to South Dakota.  The first night we stayed at Caprock Canyons State Park here in Texas.  On the way back we stayed in Colorado Springs, CO.