Hi all! Below is a rough itinerary and some notes from a trip my husband and I took to South Dakota (SD) in September 2020 over Labor Day weekend.
Accommodations

• We stayed in Rapid City at a place called Lake Park Campground and Cottages, 2912 Chapel Lane 7, Rapid City, SD 57702
  • We found this spot on AirBnB. It had a full kitchen, was affordable, and had wifi which we needed since we worked remote for two days. The wifi worked well for at least one of us to be on a video call (with the video on) and the other to use wifi. I’m not sure if the signal was strong enough for two people to be on a video call (with their video on) at once–this is now a very important consideration in our travel haha.

Length of Trip

• We stayed a full week in SD and worked two days remote. You could easily spend over a week in this area, there are endless gorgeous hikes. 

Random Notes from our Trip

• DOWNLOAD THE ALL TRAILS HIKING APP!! Read hiking trail comments before you go on them. People will advise if trails are closed, muddy, warn you about snakes, help you decide if a trail is worth your limited travel time. You can also pay All Trails for their pro-account to download offline maps which can be useful for exploring in National Parks since service is limited.
• Bring binoculars for cool birds and to look for animals from afar.
• Know what to do if bitten by a rattlesnake and look out for rattlesnakes on the trail! SD is rattlesnake country.
• Bring loads of water!
• Know what poison ivy looks like, there’s A LOT of it at Wind Cave National Park and in the Black Hills National Forest.
• Get Betty Kaye’s Smokehouse bbq—it’s located within a grocery store in Rapid City, near the deli. It’s takeout food, no in-person dining. 
• We went to Lost Cabin Beer Co. for a beer run. It looked nice inside and had outdoor seating.

Random Badlands National Park Notes

• The National Park Service (NPS) park map doesn’t show hiking trails on their paper park map (the one you’d pickup at the Visitor Center) or details of the hikes so take pictures of such maps in advance if desired. For the North Unit of the park, all the preset trails are well marked so you don’t really need such a map but I wish we had one to see how/where hikes intersect. 
• The Stronghold Unit aka South Unit of the Badlands was closed during our visit as it’s Native American land and was not open to the public. I’m not sure if this part of the park has opened since.
• Going south around the park is way faster, about 45 minutes from Sheep Mtn Road. Going north is longer and on a dirt road but has about 25 pullover lookout points along the way. Definitely drive the longer route to see bison and prairie dogs.
• If you do somehow make it into the Stronghold Unit don’t do the Sheep Mountain Trail hike—you can drive most of it, it has no shade.
• 
  • A better quality map is online. The bottom circle is Sheep Mountain. The top circle is a road with overlooks, the overlook route doesn’t come up on Google when you search the best route because it’s about 45 minutes longer.

Let’s get to the good stuff…the itinerary

• En route to SD there are a TON of billboards (like 75+, no joke) leading to a place called Wall Drug. It’s an “Old Western” mall where you can buy cool Badlands sweaters/clothing, a cowgirl/boy hat, get fast food, etc. It’s cool if you want to buy something.

1st Day – Sunday

• Custer State Park: Black Elk Peak aka Harney Peak hike – moderate – a little tricky, was very crowded on a holiday weekend but had a super cool view at the top. Would have been cool to bring small camping chairs next time because the view at the end of the trail is really neat and you want to hangout there for a while and maybe even take a nap.
  • This is the most popular hike so I advise doing this on a weekday since the weekends are crowded. I think we hiked the #7 trail up and the #9 down. You don’t necessarily need an offline map here, this trail is pretty well marked but if you’re not confident with directions make sure you have a map of the trail because it can be a little confusing if you’re hiking the loop and not the down and back. You can spend all day doing this hike and hanging out at the top.
• Sylvan Lake for sunset or we went to Pactola Lake.
• Pactola Lake for swimming and sunset.
• Best sunset spot: (44.0757639, -103.4897082)
• Best swim spot: Pactola Lake View Point
• The Black Elk Peak trail starts near Sylvan Lake, after your hike you can go swimming – bring floaties/intertubes!

2nd Day – Monday

• We worked remote.
• After work we went to Mt. Rushmore. I don’t mean to not be patriotic but I would only go here during the week. Not on a weekend. We spent maybe 10 minutes looking at the carved mountain which is cool but if we had to spend 40+ minutes finding parking, paying for parking (which took too long on a non-weekend), I think this would have been a waste of time. I rather have spent my efforts seeing Crazy Horse Memorial (which we didn’t have time to do but looks cool!).
  • Mt. Rushmore does have a short trail but it was closed when we visited and there was a small free museum but we didn’t go in because of Covid. Also, if you know someone who recently went and kept their parking ticket from Mt. Rushmore, it’s a free pass for the whole year so ask for it. It’s $10 to park your car at Mt. Rushmore and entry to the park is free. Paying for parking is a painnn, you have to pay via a parking machine and they’re terribly slow.

3rd Day – Tuesday 

• We worked remote.
• After work we hiked a small section of the Flume Trail in the Black Hills which is quite long (over 12 miles) and super gorgeous. This trail is not well marked so have an offline map available if planning to hike the whole thing. This was an old gold rush trail.

4th Day – Wednesday 

• Badlands National Park: We entered the Badlands a specific way to see a lot of bison. We wanted to get to roughly this lat/long: (43.9797968, -102.3801333). Go toward Sage Creek Campground, it’s all on dirt roads and you’ll be taken to the bison area! Also, pro tip, you can enter Badlands National Park for free through Sage Creek Campground but you should really pay to support the park!! Or get an annual National Park Pass, they’re only $80!
  • We did most of the pre-set short hikes this day: Door Trail, Window Trail, Notch Trail (our favorite out of these short ones), Saddle Pass, and Fossil Exhibit Trail.
  • Then we drove and saw all the scenic overlooks. In my opinion the 2 best overlooks are: White River Valley Overlook and Yellow Mounds Overlook.  

5th Day – Thursday

• We went to Bear Country USA in the morning which you don’t need to do. It was really neat seeing so many bear up-close but I felt guilt afterward because I was supporting animal captivity going here. FYI, on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend this place had a 2 mile long line to get in (no joke). Get there early if you plan to go on a weekend or try to go during the week, they close at 6PM.
• Badlands: Castle Trail to the Medicine Root Loop–these 2 trails connect so we did both. This is an absolutely incredible hike, do it all!! We saw a bighorn sheep on our trail and a coyote. If you’re quiet and looking you should see animals! I would bring binoculars.
  • On Castle Trail this is a super sweet camping area—there’s a grassy hill you could camp atop: (43.7625834, -101.9672069)
  • The end of Castle Trail is a great place to watch a sunset. Yellow Mounds overlook was a nice sunset spot as well.

6th Day – Friday

• Custer State Park: Sunday Gultch Trail – you can do this hike in 3-ish hours if you push it. It’s really neat and heavily-trafficked. This is another one to avoid doing on a weekend, it’ll be very crowded since it’s very popular. It also starts near Sylvan Lake where you can swim before/after or even watch the sunset there.
  • You can do another hike after the Sunday Gultch.
• Wind Cave National Park: The caves were closed due to Covid while we were there. We started with the Cold Brook Canyon Trail which is a beautiful shorter hike where you walk through a prairie dog town. You may also see bison, and there are eagles and other incredible birds that live here–bring binoculars. My favorite part was that no one else was on this trail! Watch out for rattlesnakes tho!! Then we did the Rankin Ridge Trail to watch the sunset which is a nice loop hike that’s short and atop the hill is a fire tower (closed during Covid). We brought up camping chairs to sit at the top and we heard a pack of coyotes howling. This was an amazing sunset spot.

7th Day – Saturday

• Spearfish Falls: We didn’t spend much time looking for hikes here so I would do that if you want to go here. Here you’ll see incredible waterfalls. Reception is terrible. Have a map ready. 
  • This is a popular area, avoid the weekend if possible.
  • First we saw Spearfish Falls which is a very quick hike–more of a nature trail, then we did the Roughlock Falls Trail which was short and nice and you can have lunch near these falls, then we did the Devil’s Bathtub hike. Devil’s Bathtub was a very neat hike where you have to walk through a lot of water so wear water shoes. At the end of this hike you can go down a rock slide into a little pool of water which made this hike worth it to me since otherwise it’s very crowded.
  • There’s a scenic drive you can take here.
  • Don’t do the Savoy-Waterfalls Trail–it’s right along the road and was too loud for us.

Other things we didn’t do but wanted to:

• Corn Palace
• Deadwood, SD
• Crazy Horse Memorial–they have a museum I really want to go to but didn’t feel comfortable doing so during the earlier Covid days
• Al’s Oasis 
• Alpine Inn Restaurant