4 Days in South Dakota
Day 1: Sioux Falls
Another day, another 9-to-5 of driving across states. Today, we left Milwaukee and drove to Sioux Falls where we were going to spend a night before making our way to Badlands National Park. We drove through 3 states today: Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we reached Sioux Falls and only had enough energy to find some Mexican food for dinner and a quick stop at the city’s namesake: the Sioux Falls themselves. Dare we say we liked it better than Niagara Falls? Realistically, we probably don’t but we didn’t have to pay for parking or be with crowds of tourists at Sioux Falls.
Day 2: Badlands National Park
At some point in our drive yesterday we started seeing billboards for a place called Wall Drug. We looked into it a little more and it’s this giant attraction that’s now basically turned into its own mall of sorts. It was on our way to Badlands National Park and we had a lot of time to kill so we decided to go.
We counted at least 65 more billboards on our way over to Wall Drug, which is just crazy. Little did we know that this place would be a random hodge-podge of things: 5-cent coffee, donuts and pie, western stores, souvenir shops, a robot T-Rex, replicas of Mt. Rushmore, bison, and wagons to take pictures with, and grumpy women who took my advice but didn’t care to actually acknowledge me when I pointed them in the direction of another restroom so they wouldn’t have to wait in line. The whole place is a big gimmick and I think it’s exactly what they were going for. They got us to come, so I guess something is working for them.
We checked into our campsite in the late afternoon. There was a lot of standing water near our site, which we knew was a bad sign for mosquito bites so we layered on the repellent. It wasn’t foolproof—in fact, Keon ended up getting over a dozen bites from a bug that we assumed crawled under his shirt and feasted. Usually it’s me that gets that many bites.
The second longest hike in the park is only 1.5 miles round trip so we did that one just before sunset. It wasn’t strenuous but it requires you to climb up a ladder and walk along some cliffs, so it’s not for everyone.
We went to bed as soon as the sun went down but ended up staying awake until midnight since it was so hot. This is something that we aren’t used to while camping so we definitely learned how to manage it and keep ourselves cool after this night.
Day 3: Badlands National Park and Rapid City
Today was going to be a rough one. The high temperature would be 100 degrees and without any relief in the form of shade or bodies of water, we knew we’d largely be driving around with the air conditioning on and then sitting at our campsite trying to keep cool.
That is exactly what we ended up doing. We drove into the Sage Creek Wilderness Area to try to see some wildlife, primarily bison and bighorn sheep. We saw a ton of prairie dogs, no bighorn sheep, and 2 bison up close (the rest were black blobs that we saw from afar and assumed it was a herd). It was pretty cool seeing the bison cross the road in front of us. It also took a poop right in front of us and it’s just not everyday that you get that timing….
After stopping by some more viewpoints, we went back to camp and it was sweltering at this point. The park is also small so it’s not like we had many things to do to keep ourselves busy. So we napped and read before realizing that we’d still have so many hours left to go before the sun sets and we could try to sleep. Since we weren’t doing anything and we did have a long drive tomorrow, we decided to try to make the most of our time and start driving a bit towards Mt. Rushmore, which is where we’d visit next. We found an Airbnb in Rapid City, cut an hour and a half from tomorrow’s drive, and spent the rest of the night clean, cool, and comfortable.
Day 4: Mt. Rushmore
Today we drove to Mt. Rushmore. We went into it with low expectations because of our slight disappointment with Niagara Falls (I’ll stop bringing it up after this, promise). It ended up being a better experience. We didn’t do any of the tours or stay for the learning events, a gentleman that we helped take a picture for did drop some random facts on us and it kind of felt the same. We Googled some more history behind Mt. Rushmore and next thing you know, we’re off to our next state: Wyoming!
