As of yesterday, I now have a car that I am confident will allow us to take the hitherto unknown Family Road Trip.
The first place LilMiss wants to go to is Mount Rushmore. I figure we’ll swing by the Corn Palace and Wall Drug also.
Where else should we go? Any great inexpensive places to stay?
Deadwood is a really cool town. It’s very close to Mt. Rushmore. It’s set up like a wild west gunslinger town. Wild Bill was killed there and every day there is a re-enactment at the time he was killed. ~2:00 Pm I think. There are casinos, if you’re into that sort of thing, most of which are small are personal rather than the huge Las Vegas style. Hotels are reasonable but it’s been several years since I’ve been there. Probably more popular now since the TV show though.
Sturgis is also right there if you’re into Harley Davidson. Huge biker rally and same wonderfully weird and wacky people.
Somewhere south of Mt. Rushmore they are carving a mountain to look like Crazy Horse. Mounted on his horse and pointing out ahead of him. A work in progress but it gives you an idea of what goes into such things.
Careful driving as towns can be extremely few and far between. Keep a full tank and have a wonderful time. I always did. Lived in North Dakota for a while and explored the whole area as mucha s I could.
Oh yeah don’t forget to see the Badlands State Park in the NW corner of the state. Wild life galore. The scenery is sublime. Most of the old western movies were actually filmed there.
My mom packed up everything and moved to the black hills about 10 years ago (along with her Junior High boyfriend!). She lives in Lead (pronounced ‘Leed’)which is just up the road from Deadwood. I’ve been there several times recently.
Yes, do Rushmore. It’s fun.
Do Crazy House monument. It’s still under construction and once it’s done it’ll dwarf Rushmore.
Wall Drug is OK. A little cheesy but I suppose that’s the point.
The badlands are a must.
Don’t forget Custer State Park out there. Great wildlife. Don’t try to pet the buffalo. They only look tame.
Deadwood is a nice town…if a little rundown. Nice place to visit, sort of. The small casinos are cute beyond belief.
There’s one place we visited the name of which I can’t recall. It’s a mine shaft where some guys were mining and they struck an actual underground river and WHOOSH! out they went! Now it’s a hole in the side of the mountain with a waterfall. Cool to see.
And if you want to make the extra trip it’s only an hour or two to Devil’s Tower from there. That’s really worth seeing. Even if you haven’t seen Close Encounters. Man, is that one weird place.
Things to see in the Black Hills/Mount Rushmore area:
Flintstones Bedrock City
Custer State Park, particularly the Needles
Black Hills Reptile Gardens
Black Hills Caverns
In the south-central part of SD is Badlands National Park. Beautiful scenery.
Finally, in the south-east corner, in the town of Vermillion, check out the Shrine to Music museum. Very interesting collection of odd musical instruments.
Enjoy the trip!
You would probably go through Yankton if you go to Vermillion—Tom Brokaw attended Yankton High School; I think for just one year. He did college in Vermillion. He came to Yankton for some festivities once, and I got to shake hands with him. Old Tom and I go way back. Yankton used to be the Territorial Capital way before SD was a state. Someone mentioned Deadwood as being where Wild Bill was snuffed and that’s true. But, Yankton is where Jack McCall (the nutjob who croaked Wild Bill) was brought for trial and execution—hung his insane ass somewhere there, but the location is forgotten. Lawrence Welk got his start in radio in Yankton but the real reason I want you to visit the place is this: Yankton is the best kept secret in the United States and I would move back there in a heartbeat if my ex would leave----
In the Black Hills region there are also a couple of less visited spots in the national park system, Wind Cave NP and Jewel Cave NM. These are two of the longest known caves in the world (in fact, I’ve read that, judging from the wind speed at the mouth of Wind Cave, it’s thought that only 5% of the cave has been mapped, if I remember correctly). I’ve been to Wind Cave, though not Jewel Cave; if you go to Wind Cave, don’t go expecting to see the stalactites and stalagmites commonly seen in other caves; instead, it has boxwork formations which, as I understand, are fairly rare.
Also, if you’re in the Sioux Falls area, I recommend stopping by the Porter Sculpture Park, just off I-90 a little west of Sioux Falls; its a field of large sculptures welded together form assorted farm equipment and such.
If you want to do the Brokaw tour, then it’s Bristol, not Yankton, you head to. That’s his family’s hometown, founded by his great-grandfather and settled by my father’s grandparents. In the last chapter of “The Greatest Generation”, he tells how he was inspired to write the book watching his uncle put flags on veterans’ graves in a cemetary in Bristol.
Then go see the Corn Palace…
Here’s a link to some lesser known roadtrips in SD (a state that I have all new respect for since reading its [www.sde.state.ok.us/test/SAT/SATstates03.pdf+“south+dakota”+“sat+scores”+georgia&hl=en]SAT](http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:uLcOyYHwqtMJ:[url) scores just what is it that’s so outstanding about midwestern education?).
Uh, make that [www.sde.state.ok.us/test/SAT/SATstates03.pdf+“south+dakota”+“sat+scores”+georgia&hl=en]SAT](http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:uLcOyYHwqtMJ:[url) scores (and in case this link doesn’t work, for such a rural and underwhelmed-by-recognition-in-other-areas state, it finished fifth; it’s brother North was first).
I’d second taking the time to visit Devil’s Tower. It’s an amazing sight. The prairie dog village at its base is pretty cool, too.
Mt. Rushmore is interesting, I guess, but I’ve seen pix of it before Borglum went to work, and it was better looking then.
Thanks for your responses, people!
I’ve talked to a few people here in my workplace about it and they all want to come. One woman, who has jetted pretty much everywhere, said SDak was her favorite vacation spot. Weird.
The only bummer we are facing is that the trip will not be a whole week adventure. We’re shoving it into a fairly busy June, as I know how HOT it can get in July/August.
The itinerary so far:
Leave Minneapolis at Noon on a Wednesday
Drive to Champlain (?). Spend the night. I have been told the best way to see the badlands is early, and slowly. So that’s what we’re gonna do.
Make our way into Deadwood Thursday (stopping at Wall Drug. We’ve scratched the Corn Palace of our To-Do list). Explore Deadwood and that which is near.
On Friday we’ll hit Mount Rushmore and the Flintstones Park
Saturday will be Custer State Park.
Sunday afternoon, home.
The last time I was in SDak, I was 14. I remember seeing Mt Rushmore and thinking to myself “…and? it’s a friggin’ ROCK”
On that same trip we broke down. In the middle of nowhere. In 100F heat. Two adults and 9 teenagers. It wasn’t pretty. Ergo, going in June 
NOW: Where are the other kitschy places to hit in SDak? I know in Champlain they have the huge buffalo monuments. No Ball-O-Twine? No Enormous Chicken?
Oh, and we’ll also be seeing Crazy Horse. I explained to LilMiss that he will not be completed probably until HER children are adults. She was in awe.
DeSmet was the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the rest of her family is buried there. There’s a museum, I think.
Personally I couldn’t pass up the Outhouse Museum in Gregory, SD (also the site of the Oscar Micheaux Festival. (Micheaux, a black homesteader in SD, was the first African-American to produce a feature length film and one of the few Dakotans with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.)
The full size replicas of Michelangelo’s David & Moses in Sioux Falls might be worth seeing if you’ve never been to Florence (or Rock Island, IL, where there’s another one).
Well, there is a giant prairie dog near the entrance to Badlands NP.
You’ve got to see the presentation on how the thing was sculpted. That makes it a lot cooler.
I’m not all that impressed by the Crazy Horse monument. The clipped us for (IIRC) $15 a head to see something that didn’t look like it had any more done to it since I was there in '72!
It’s a little silly, but Flintstones Bedrock City is fun, and you can do the whole thing in less than 2 hours.
Somewhere off the interstate west of Sioux Falls theres a pretty good ghost town.
I don’t recall the exact location.
De Smet, as above, is where the Ingalls homestead was. The museum is apparently really cool–all set up for kids to be a pioneer kid. There are several buildings, 10 acres of farm done by horse plow (on Memorial Day weekend you can plant seed corn) and a whole lot of restored prairie-land. You put on the clothes, have a lesson in the school (ring the bell!), run around the buildings and get messy with everything. * Storybook travels : from Eloise’s New York to Harry Potter’s London, visits to 30 of the best-loved landmarks in children’s literature*, by Colleen Dunn Bates and Susan LaTempa, gives great information. (I just returned it to the library, or I’d just give you the info myself. Sorry.) If you ever liked the books, this is a reason to go to SD all by itself.
A little out of the way and a tad outside of SD - but Carhenge is worth seeing, sort of. Take 18 out of Rapid City to Chadron, NE and 87 to Alliance.
A truely strange site.