Black Hills Trip Planner: Where to Go and What to Skip

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One of the areas we explored in great detail on our first cross-country trip as a family was the Black Hills of South Dakota. Looking at the map, I started with the Badlands, mostly because that's where I could get camping reservations. Then I found Wind Cave and thought a cave sounded cool. From there I realized this was also where Mount Rushmore lives, and I accidentally stumbled onto Custer State Park. Planning by accident: highly recommended, would not do it again.

This short trip didn't even scratch the surface. There is so much more I could have done. Fair warning: the Black Hills are a lot like my jokes. You'll find them everywhere, and somehow there's always one more.

In this article I'm laying out the places worth your time: what each stop is, which of my posts go deeper, and which tours and trails to pick. Don't think of this as a fully packaged tour. Think of it as the menu for your own adventure, and I promise the puns are all-you-can-eat.

In This Post

Location Summaries

Badlands National Park

The Badlands is a great place to hike and explore a truly unique ecosystem. It wasn't my favorite place to camp, but it gave me one of my first truly awe-inspiring moments at a national park. The name is a bit unfair, though. I found the Badlands pretty good, and I'm told that's just erosion talking. I wrote a few articles on the Badlands, so check them out:

Planning note: give the Badlands Loop a full day all to itself. Between the overlooks, the trails, and the "just one more pullout" effect, it won't fit around anything else. Entry is $30 per private vehicle, good for seven days, and the park takes cards only. The fee covers everyone in the car, so a full minivan costs the same as a lonely sedan. Finally, a place where having a big family is the budget move. If you have a 4th grader in the family, the free Every Kid Outdoors pass covers the entrance fee, which is worth a look before you pay.

Wall Drug

Every road trip through South Dakota has one unofficial rule: you will be advertised at until you stop. Wall Drug sits at the edge of the Badlands and works as the world's most persuasive rest stop. Plan on a short stop and plan on buying something you didn't know you needed. I went in for free ice water and came out a changed man, and by changed I mean lighter in the wallet.

Planning note: Wall Drug, the Badlands, and the Minuteman Missile sites all sit along the same stretch of I-90 on the east side of the Black Hills, so I group them together in my Black Hills itineraries. Treat them as one neighborhood and knock them out before you head west to the caves. It's the most efficient use of a highway since the invention of the glove box snack.

Minuteman Missile Silo

The Minuteman Missile sites are a neat experience and a chance to step back in time and see what life was like during the Cold War. We missed a great opportunity to tour the launch control facility because of poor planning, but you're reading this blog, so you won't make the same mistake I did. Consider my failure a public service. My planning really was a launch failure.

Planning note: the park itself is free, but going underground at the Delta-01 Launch Control Facility takes a reserved 45-minute tour ($12 for adults, $8 for youth, plus a $1 reservation fee per ticket). Tours hold only a small group, so they fill up, and tickets go on sale on Recreation.gov about 30 days ahead. Reserve the day they open. These tickets go faster than a Minuteman, and I'd rather you didn't miss it by a few days like I did. The Delta-09 silo, where you view the missile through a glass enclosure, is free and doesn't need a ticket, and the visitor center is the best place to get your bearings first.

Wind Cave National Park

There are two notable caves in the Black Hills, Wind Cave and Jewel Cave. Wind Cave is the smaller of the two but generally more impressive in geology. It has boxwork, which is unique to the Black Hills and found in only a few other caves worldwide. It's a cave that really thinks outside the box, which is rare, because it's mostly inside the box.

Planning note: there is no park entrance fee, but every cave tour is ticketed. Roughly half of the tickets can be reserved ahead on Recreation.gov (up to 120 days out), and the rest are first come, first served at the visitor center. Same-day tickets can sell out hours before the tour. Wind Cave also holds a constant 54°F, so bring the jacket you were sure you wouldn't need. It's a cool 54°F down there, which is the cave's way of saying it's totally chill about visitors.

Jewel Cave National Monument

Jewel Cave is larger than Wind Cave but a much less complex cave system. Still, it's impressive to see, and it offers tours and an elevator into the cave, the fastest and longest elevator in the state, actually.


Planning note: like Wind Cave, the monument is free to enter and you pay only for tours. The Scenic Tour is $16 for adults and $8 for ages 6 to 15, and reservations open roughly 30 to 60 days ahead in summer. Tours often sell out by mid to late morning in peak season. Closed-toe shoes are required on every tour. Sandals are a toe-tal no.

Custer State Park

Arguably, the icon of the Black Hills is Custer State Park, not the national parks and monuments. While the Badlands is unique, Custer State Park offers the views responsible for Mount Rushmore and protects land in a state closest to its natural form.

The park is worth building a whole itinerary around. The big three are the Custer Wildlife Loop, Sylvan Lake, and the Needles Highway, and none of them fit into a lunch break. Don't worry, you'll be having a bison-sized appetite for more anyway.

Planning note: a seven-day entrance license is $25 per vehicle under the state's December 2024 fee change. The park's own page may still show the older $20, so expect $25 at the kiosk. Camping inside the park is the best way to stretch your time. The state's fee schedule lists Custer's modern campground at $27 and Center Lake at $23, and camper reports put tent sites anywhere from about $25 to $40 a night depending on the campground, so I use that range below. Nonresidents also pay a $10 online reservation fee, which I've left out of the totals.

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore is a monument that is purely American and known to many across the globe. The faces of four of our presidents glare at you as you honor their memory and the monumental feat of engineering it took to carve a granite mountain.

Planning note: there's no entrance fee to the memorial, but parking runs $10 a vehicle, as covered in the visitor's guide above. Four presidents, one parking fee. Honestly, that's a better deal than most elections.

Other Notable Locations

I didn't visit these places, but they're on the list for a second trip to the Black Hills, so I've included them in my Black Hills itineraries.

Crazy Horse Memorial

This is a monument to those who lived on this land long before the United States existed. It's a sculpture of Crazy Horse on his horse that you can visit while the crew keeps carving, which has been going on since 1948. The memorial is privately funded and takes no government money, which means admission and donations from people like us, looking for a cool stop along the road, keep the drills running. It's a project that's truly a rock-solid commitment.

Planning note: admission is charged per vehicle, last published at $30 for a car with three or more people in the off-season and $35 in summer. The bus ride to the base of the mountain is an optional extra at $5 a person. Those are the 2024 published rates, so confirm before you go.

The Mammoth Site

Have you ever wanted to see a dig site in real time? Well, you're in luck. You can visit this museum and watch a mammoth excavation happen right in front of you. More than 60 mammoths have come out of the ground there so far, which means the "dig" part of the schedule never runs out of material. It's the one museum where I truly dig the exhibits.

Planning note: general admission is $14 for ages 13 to 59 and $11 for ages 4 to 12. Under-4s are free.

Devils Tower National Monument

Devils Tower is a large rock structure jutting from the earth like a giant tower. Yep, it's basically a big rock that you can go and visit! It's also America's first national monument, declared by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, so it's a very old, very famous big rock. No one's tower-ing over it anytime soon.

Planning note: entry is $25 per private vehicle. The Belle Fourche River Campground sits inside the monument at $20 a night, first come, first served, and runs seasonally (roughly mid-May to October), so check dates if you're traveling in the shoulder season.

Tour and Trail Cheat Sheet

Here's the menu. Pick your tours and hikes from this list, then slot them into whatever trip length fits your calendar. (Want it done for you? Day-by-day itineraries are coming in follow-up posts.)

Cave Tours

Cave Tour Length Stairs Ages Season Approx. Price (Adult / Youth)
Wind Cave Garden of Eden 1 hr about 150 All Year-round about $14
Wind Cave Natural Entrance 1 hr 15 min about 300 All Year-round $16 adult
Wind Cave Fairgrounds 1 hr 30 min about 450 All Year-round $16 adult
Wind Cave Candlelight 2 hr about 424 8+ Summer only check with park
Wind Cave Wild Cave up to 4 hr crawling 16+ Summer only about $44+
Wind Cave Accessibility 30 min none All Year-round check with park
Jewel Cave Discovery 20 min elevator, optional 15 steps 6+ (5 and under free) Year-round $6 / $3
Jewel Cave Scenic about 1 hr 20 min 734 6+ (5 and under free) Year-round $16 / $8
Jewel Cave Historic Lantern 1 hr 45 min about 600 8+ Summer only $16 / $8
Jewel Cave Wild Caving 3 to 4 hr scrambling and crawling 16+ Summer only $45
Minuteman Missile Delta-01 Launch Control 45 min elevator and a quarter-mile walk 6+ Reservation only $12 / $8

Wind Cave prices above are approximate and drawn from published guides and our own visit. The Wind Cave Wild Cave Tour and Candlelight Tour are summer-only, and the Candlelight Tour needs a minimum age of 8.

Hikes by Stop

Stop Trail Distance Difficulty
Badlands Door Trail 0.75 mi round trip Easy
Badlands Window Trail 0.25 mi round trip Easy
Badlands Fossil Exhibit Trail 0.25 mi round trip Easy
Badlands Cliff Shelf 0.5 mi round trip Moderate
Badlands Notch Trail (log ladder) 1.5 mi round trip Moderate to strenuous
Badlands Saddle Pass 0.25 mi round trip Strenuous
Badlands Medicine Root Loop 4 mi round trip Moderate
Badlands Castle Trail 10 mi round trip Moderate
Wind Cave Prairie Vista 1 mi round trip Easy
Wind Cave Elk Mountain 1 mi round trip Easy
Wind Cave Rankin Ridge 1 mi round trip Easy
Wind Cave Wind Cave Canyon 1.8 mi one way Easy
Wind Cave Cold Brook Canyon 1.4 mi one way Moderate
Jewel Cave Roof Trail 0.25 mi loop Easy
Jewel Cave Canyons Trail 3.5 mi loop Easy to moderate
Jewel Cave Hell Canyon Trail 5.3 mi loop Moderate
Custer State Park Sylvan Lake Shore Trail 1 mi loop Easy to moderate
Custer State Park Cathedral Spires 2.3 mi out and back Strenuous
Custer State Park Little Devils Tower 1.5 mi one way Strenuous
Custer State Park Black Elk Trail #9 (to Black Elk Peak) 3.3 mi one way Moderate
Mount Rushmore Presidential Trail 0.6 mi paved loop, about 422 stairs from the Sculptor's Studio Moderate
Devils Tower Valley View Trail 0.6 mi Easy
Devils Tower South Side Trail 0.6 mi Moderate
Devils Tower Joyner Ridge Trail 1.5 mi loop Moderate
Devils Tower Tower Trail (paved) 1.8 mi out and back Moderate
Devils Tower Red Beds Trail 2.8 mi loop Strenuous

Coming Next: The Itineraries

Ready to turn the menu into a plan? Over the next few posts I'll lay out Black Hills itineraries from 3 to 10 days, built around caves, wildlife, history, and scenic drives and hiking. Each has a day-by-day schedule, a family-of-four price tag and a Google Maps link, and I'll finish with the trip we actually took.

References

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