The free ice water wasn’t memorable?
It is really worth your time. They have a great collection of airplanes amazingly enough, most of them are indoors.
Here is my daughter standing in front of the SR71 Blackbird hanging from the ceiling in the atrium
I grew up in Custer, SD and still live in the Black Hills area. I would not recommend the Crazy Horse Memorial. Waaaaaaay overpriced and pretty boring to boot.
FYI, the 76th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally officially begins on Monday. So if you’re gonna do anything in the Black Hills, be prepared to be inundated by motorcycles. Even the journey across the state on I-90 is going to be pretty crowded with bikes.
I used to go to Evan’s Plunge at least once every summer when I was a kid. It was always a good time. Of course, that was probably about 30 years ago so I can’t speak to what it’s like now.
It’s been 25 years since I was there- don’t remember what they charged then. Looking at recent photos I see that progress is a bit slow. In another 150 years it’ll be impressive!
They do a few blasts each year but they’re by no means in a hurry to finish it. With the amount of money they rake in from the tourists every summer, there’s no reason for them to do much more work on it.
As a matter of fact, I’m going to drive by it in about an hour and it will be about the same as it was when I was a kid. Residents of Custer County get free admission. Since my truck has Custer County license plates, I could take advantage of that. That being said, I never will. Not even worth the drive there, IMO.
My wife’s cousin visited recently and she said it is very impressive. No mention about it being overpriced - next time I see her, likely at Thanksgiving, I’ll ask about that.
She said Crazy Horse will be massive and will dwarf Mt. Rushmore. This image protrays the size comparison: size comparison between mount rushmore and crazy horse - Google Search
I thought it was pretty cool when I was there 25 years ago, but I think part of that was imagining how it would eventually look. I was surprised to see how little progress they’ve made. I knew it would be much larger than Mt. Rushmore when it’s finished but right now it’s not that much different from what it looked like a quarter century ago.
Between Sioux Falls and Madison, you can stop at the Green Giant statue in Blue Earth MN. It used to be more impressive before the trees around it grew up to be bigger than the statue.
The new Spam museum is in downtown Austin MN. I haven’t been there yet (it’s 45 miles from where I live) but the old one was a hoot.
As someone else mentioned, the Pipestone National Monument is quite interesting, as is the town’s architecture itself.
Other than that, the drive across Minnesota is pretty boring. But it’s not as bad as the drive across South Dakota.
My wife’s cousin said it is about $20 per car and that gets you into the visitor center and a view from a distance. She recommends it, and $20 is reasonable. I will go, the next time I’m in that area.
ETA: she was there earlier this summer.
I’ve put together my tentative itinerary for the trip.
It’s about 2500 miles, 7 days and 6 nights
Home - Leave Sept 4
Maquoketa Caves State Park
Buffalo Bill Museum
World’s Largest Truck Stop
Herbert Hoover Presidential Library
Squirrel Cage Prison
Overnight Microtel Hotel - night 1 - Leave Sep 5
Great Platte River Road Monument
SAC & Aerospace Museum
Overnight Hawthorne Hotel - nights 2-4(leave Sept 8)
Carhenge
Evans Plunge Mineral Springs
Chief Crazy Horse Memorial
Mt Rushmore
Overnight Black Hills Inn night 5 (Leave Sept. 9)
Wall Drug Store
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site
Pioneer Auto Museum
Overnight Microtel Hotel - night 6 - leave Sept 10
The National Music Museum
Falls Park
Pipestone National Park
Spam Museum
Home night 7 - arrive September 10
This part is a little screwy. To go from Murdo (Pioneer Auto Museum) to Vermillion (The National Music Museum) takes you quite a way south of I-90. And then to go from Vermillion to Sioux Falls (Falls Park) would take you back up to I-90 (good), but then you have to go about 25 miles north on I-29 to get to Highway 34 to go to Pipestone. Then you would have to go the same 25 miles south again on Highway 75 (I think that’s the one) to get to I-90 to go to Austin (Spam Museum). I don’t think it’s really doable in a day. The hike around Pipestone National Monument alone takes quite awhile, probably an hour or more.
Sounds like my kind of road trip! Enjoy!
It’s not perfect, but I figure the Music Museum and Falls Park for fairly early morning. Actually, since the Park is closest to the hotel, it makes sense to do that first, go south to the music museum, and then back up north to Pipestone.
The drive from Sioux Falls to Madison is about 6 hours without the detours, so I’m trying to make it all fit.
According to their website, it’s based on the number of people per vehicle. One person in a vehicle (me) is $11, which is reasonably close in price to some other attractions I’m stopping at.
OK, I didn’t get that you were planning to stay in Sioux Falls and not Murdo. It may be doable then. Especially since they upped the speed limit on the interstates to 80.
So how was your trip? Did you manage to do everything on your itinerary, or at least most of it?
The high points to me were Carhenge and the Badlands drive. Oh, and pot smoking in Denver. 
Yes, I had a really good trip. I cut my day trip into the higher levels of the Rockies short due to – best guess – altitude sickness, so my total distance was 2550 miles.
I’m still sorting through thousands of pictures. I had a camera on the dash taking high res picture every 5 seconds for the whole thing. I have a fair number of good ones but I haven’t yet put them online.
Here are some of my trip pics. The Badlands, Car Henge, and the SAC Museum