July 19th Travel to the Black Hills of South Dakota

We left Badlands National Park in the morning and heading west on Route 90 towards Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We stopped briefly at the famous Wall Drug 80 FT Dinosaur off of exit 110 for a Airstream photo opportunity and were disappointed that we could not get our TV and trailer close enough to the statue for a good shot (see photo, our rig next to the Dinosaur, on the right hand side). Our travel goal for the day was Horsethief Lake campground which is managed by the U.S. Forestry Department. This is a "first come, first serve" campground just a few miles from the entrance to Mount Rushmore National Memorial so we were concerned it could fill up if we didn't get there early enough in the day. After a brief stop in Rapid City for supplies (Walmart Supercenter) it was an easy and scenic run into the Black Hills so we pulled into the campground shortly after noon. Good luck was with us as there were 6 open sites for us to select from. We choice site #19 which was one of the largest sites in the park and was fairly level. After setting up camp we gathered our week's worth of laundry and went the few miles to Keystone, SD which had the closest public laundromat to our campground. Keystone is a tourist town with lots of fake saloons, pizza shops, mini golf courses and tacky shops so we just did our laundry and headed back to camp where we enjoyed a beautiful walk around the lake on well maintained paths before making dinner and retiring early.

Note to our Airstreaming friends: Horsethief Lake campground does not have hookups, showers or a dump station. RV size limit is posted at 25' but we saw a few there that were larger. There are very few sites available that would hold more than 25' though. Nightly fee was $23.00 which at first we were shocked at, it was the highest price we've paid for a site for the trip so far. But then I checked out the KOA which was just down the street (where the campsites were tightly packed together) and the overnight fees started at $57.00 before discount. The KOA has full hookups but that is a wicked big price difference! Of course the pricing is all about location, location, location - being so close to Mount Rushmore.