Ep. 42: The Black Hills | RV travel South Dakota camping

Hey, welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Poido. In an episode 41 we traveled about 750 miles from the Salt Lake City area to the Black Hills of South Dakota. In case you missed it, I'll put a link right up here to episode 41 so you can go back and catch it. In this episode though we're going to explore the Black Hills area to see everything that this area has to offer, so stick around. About 20 miles south of our camp in Pactola Lake sits the tourist town of Keystone, South Dakota, where the streets are lined with kitschy t-shirt shops and other tourist destinations reminiscent of the Poconos or Pigeon Forge. However, Keystone is the gateway town to what is arguably South Dakota's most famed tourist attraction. Two miles above town, accessible via a steep 10 percent grade, are the granite profiles of Mount Rushmore National Monument. South of Keystone, US Route 16A twists and turns through the Black Hills via Iron Mountain Road. This is a spectacular drive, but it isn't recommended for any type of RV save for perhaps a small Class B motorhome like the one from Europe that we were following. This isn't due to just the steep grades or narrow roads, but also the numerous one-lane tunnels that are as short as 11 feet high. At the other end of Iron Mountain Road you enter the expansive Custer State Park, which features lodging, campgrounds with hookups, and a remarkable assortment of wildlife. It's sometimes hard to fathom the there were once 25 to 30 million American bison wandering around the Great Plains of North America. Once decimated in barely more than 800 head, there are several herds replenishing the American West, including one in Custer State Park. Custer is the most working town that we found in the Black Hills, but even here there are numerous tourist attractions to keep visitors entertained. Nearby Hill City is a bit more tourist-oriented than Custer, and provides a balanced mix of regular businesses and tourist attractions to feel authentic. Just north of Hill City, not to be outdone by nearby Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial has been under construction on privately held land since 1948. South Dakota is also famed for its violent weather, which we got to experience firsthand. Biggest hail I've ever seen. In the northern Black Hills you'll find the twin historic cities of Lead and Deadwood. The Homestake Gold Mine was the first gold mine listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the 1870s. There's a free visitor center in the town of Lead with an observation deck to allow you to look down into the pit. In fact, there are still active open pit mining operations in the hills surrounding Lead. This is the Kerr Wharf pit, operated by Kerr Mining out of Chicago. It's massive! And for my fellow skiers, yes there is skiing in the Black Hills. Now this is the short side of the mountain, but Terry Peak's 1,200-foot vertical drop is the tallest of any ski area between the East Coast and the Rocky Mountains. They get about 150 inches of snowfall annually and have five lifts. Deadwood is perhaps the best known of the towns within the Black Hills. It's in Deadwood where legendary Wild West lawman Wild Bill Hickok met his maker while playing poker only several weeks after arriving to try to tame the lawless gold rush town. He's buried in the town's Mount Moriah Cemetery, right next to Western outlaw Calamity Jane. Nearly driven to extinction as a Western ghost town, Deadwood owes its current economic revival to the legalization of limited wage gambling in 1989. And at the foot of the Black Hills, if the name of Sturgis rings about, it's likely due to the huge Sturgis Motorcycle Rally that swells this sleepy town's population from less than 7,000 to nearly half a million for two weeks each August. So we're all packed up and ready to leave the Black Hills and Pactola Lake behind. Next stop, the Badlands, so make sure that if you're not yet one of our Grand Adventurers hit that subscribe button and ring that notification bell so you can come along with us to the Badlands on the next episode. If you like this video give us a thumbs up down below. If you have any questions or comments put them in the comments section and we'll do our best to help you out. And until next time, please remember, life is nothing but a Grand Adventure! We'll see you soon.