South Dakota: the Black Hills, Badlands and Mount Rushmore

1. Day 1: Arrive in Rapid City

   Rapid City Regional Airport to your hotel in downtown Rapid City

   • Drive about 18 min
   • Welcome dinner
   • Stay in Rapid City
   Day 1 details

   Fly into Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), about 15 km southeast of downtown, in time for the early-evening briefing: plan to land by about 3 pm (the latest arrival time comes with your final itinerary). Most flights connect through a hub such as Denver or Minneapolis. A driver meets you at arrivals for the short drive to a central hotel. If you land early, downtown is easy on foot: bronze statues of past presidents stand on the street corners, part of the City of Presidents series, and Main Street Square has cafes and shade, with the pine-dark ridge of the Black Hills rising just west of town. In the early evening your See Sight Tours guide meets the group for a short briefing on the week: how hot the Badlands get, which days start early and why, and how this country looks from the Lakota side, where the Black Hills are He Sapa, sacred land at the centre of their history. Then we sit down together to a welcome dinner downtown.

   Included

   • Pick-up at Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)
   • Welcome briefing with your guide
   • Welcome dinner

   Free time: Free until the early-evening briefing

2. Day 2: Into the Badlands, and a sunset drive

   Rapid City to Badlands National Park at Cedar Pass, then the Badlands Loop Road and Sage Creek Rim Road at sunset

   • Drive about 3 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Badlands
   Day 2 details

   We leave after breakfast and drive about an hour and a quarter east across the prairie, then turn south into Badlands National Park at Cedar Pass. The Lakota name, mako sica, means land that is bad: hard to cross, short of water, hot in summer and bitter in winter. At the Ben Reifel Visitor Center, named for a Lakota congressman born on the Rosebud Reservation, we get our bearings, then walk the short trails out among the buttes: the Fossil Exhibit Trail boardwalk, the Window Trail and the Door Trail. Lunch is a sit-down meal at Cedar Pass, then you rest through the hottest hours at the hotel. After an early dinner we drive the Badlands Loop Road west as the sun drops: the Yellow Mounds, the Pinnacles Overlook and a stretch of the gravel Sage Creek Rim Road, where bison graze and prairie dogs call from their burrows. We stop on the rim for sunset, when the banded walls turn orange and pink, then drive back under a dark, starry sky.

   Included

   • Badlands National Park entry
   • Ben Reifel Visitor Center at Cedar Pass
   • The Fossil Exhibit, Window and Door trails with your guide
   • Sit-down lunch at Cedar Pass
   • Sunset drive on the Badlands Loop Road and the Sage Creek Rim Road

   Easier option: Stay on the boardwalks and at the overlooks; nothing today needs more than a few hundred metres on foot.

   More active option: The Notch Trail, about 2.4 km round trip, with a log ladder up a gully and a ledge to a view over the White River valley (not for anyone uneasy with heights).

   Free time: Early afternoon free at the hotel

   Activity: Summer afternoons in the Badlands often pass 32 C with no shade: carry water and a hat. Rattlesnakes live here, so stay on the trails.

   

3. Day 3: Lakota Rapid City, then up into the Black Hills

   Badlands to Rapid City on SD 44 through Scenic, then Keystone; Mount Rushmore in the evening

   • Drive about 2.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Keystone
   Day 3 details

   Early risers can watch the sun come up over the Badlands from an overlook a few minutes from the hotel. After breakfast we take the quieter road back west, SD 44 along the southern edge of the park through Scenic, close to the Pine Ridge Reservation. In Rapid City we spend the late morning at The Journey Museum and Learning Center, which tells the story of the region from its rocks and fossils to the Lakota nations and the settlers who followed. A Lakota guide leads our visit and talks with the group about the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which recognised the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, the gold rush that broke it, and the 1980 Supreme Court ruling that the land was taken unlawfully. The Sioux nations have refused the payment ever since and asked for the land instead. After lunch in Rapid City we climb about 40 minutes into the hills to Keystone, our base for three nights, and the afternoon is free. Dinner tonight is on your own in Keystone. On summer evenings we drive ten minutes up to Mount Rushmore for the lighting ceremony.

   Included

   • Optional sunrise at a Badlands overlook
   • The Journey Museum and Learning Center in Rapid City, led by a Lakota guide
   • Sit-down lunch in Rapid City
   • Mount Rushmore evening lighting ceremony (late May to September)

   Free time: Afternoon free in Keystone

   Activity: The Mount Rushmore lighting ceremony runs on summer evenings, about late May to late September; in May and October we go up at golden hour instead. Exact dates are sent with your final itinerary.

   

4. Day 4: Mount Rushmore early, then Custer State Park

   Keystone to Mount Rushmore, south on the Iron Mountain Road to the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park, then back to Keystone

   • Drive about 3 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Keystone
   Day 4 details

   We are back at Mount Rushmore by about 7:45 am, ahead of the tour coaches, with the faces in clear morning light. Gutzon Borglum and nearly 400 workers carved them between 1927 and 1941, each about 18 m high. Walk the Presidential Trail, about 1 km with 422 steps, to stand below the granite, and visit the sculptor's studio. Your guide also tells the older story of the mountain, which the Lakota call the Six Grandfathers. Then the Iron Mountain Road winds south over its pigtail bridges, which loop over themselves to climb the grade, and through three narrow rock tunnels. In Custer State Park we drive the 29 km Wildlife Loop Road slowly, stopping for the park's bison herd, one of the largest publicly owned herds anywhere, as well as pronghorn, prairie dogs and the begging burros that wander up to cars. Lunch is a sit-down meal in the park, and we return north over the Iron Mountain Road, where the tunnels frame Mount Rushmore ahead. The rest of the afternoon is free.

   Included

   • Mount Rushmore National Memorial at about 7:45 am: the Presidential Trail and the sculptor's studio (summer)
   • The Iron Mountain Road, its pigtail bridges and tunnels
   • Custer State Park entry and the Wildlife Loop Road with your guide
   • Sit-down lunch in Custer State Park

   Optional experiences

   • A buffalo safari jeep ride off the paved road into the park's backcountry (price shown at booking)

   Easier option: Skip the steps and watch from the Grand View Terrace; at the Wildlife Loop stops, stay in the van with the windows down.

   Free time: Afternoon free in Keystone

   Activity: Bison are wild and fast: stay in the vehicle or at least 25 m away, as the park asks.

   

5. Day 5: Needles Highway, Sylvan Lake and Crazy Horse

   Keystone over the Needles Highway to Sylvan Lake, then Custer and the Crazy Horse Memorial, back by Hill City

   • Drive about 2.5 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Keystone
   Day 5 details

   Today is the high country. We are on the Needles Highway by about 9 am, before traffic queues at its one-lane tunnels. The road climbs about 23 km through Custer State Park among granite spires, past the narrow slot of the Needles Eye and the Cathedral Spires. At Sylvan Lake, about 1,850 m up, a path of about 1.6 km loops the shore, mostly level, with a scramble over granite boulders at the far end where the lake spills into Sunday Gulch. Lunch is in the small town of Custer. In the afternoon we visit the Crazy Horse Memorial, a mountain carving begun in 1948 by Korczak Ziolkowski at the invitation of the Lakota elder Henry Standing Bear. The face, finished in 1998, is about 27 m high, and the rest will take many more years. Inside are the Indian Museum of North America and, in summer, Native artists at work. Your guide is candid that some Lakota welcome the memorial and some see another carved mountain as no answer to the first. We end with a farewell dinner near Keystone.

   Included

   • The Needles Highway, the Needles Eye and the Cathedral Spires
   • Sylvan Lake shore walk with your guide
   • Sit-down lunch in Custer
   • Crazy Horse Memorial and the Indian Museum of North America
   • Farewell dinner

   Optional experiences

   • The bus from the Crazy Horse visitor center to the base of the mountain (price shown at booking)

   Easier option: Walk only the level stretch by the dam at Sylvan Lake, and see the carving from the visitor center terrace at Crazy Horse.

   More active option: In place of the afternoon at Crazy Horse, hike Black Elk Peak, at 2,208 m the highest point in South Dakota, about 11 km round trip from Sylvan Lake and 4 to 5 hours, with a local hiking guide (arranged at booking, price shown then).

   Free time: Late afternoon free before the farewell dinner

   Activity: Sylvan Lake sits at about 1,850 m, so walk slowly at first. The granite at the far end of the loop is slippery when wet.

   

6. Day 6: Deadwood, Spearfish Canyon and home

   Keystone to Deadwood, then Spearfish Canyon and Spearfish, then Rapid City Regional Airport

   • Drive about 3.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   Day 6 details

   After a last breakfast in Keystone we drive about an hour and a quarter north through Hill City to Deadwood, a gold-rush town of 1876 that grew up on treaty land and is now a National Historic Landmark. Walk Main Street, where Wild Bill Hickok was shot at a poker table that August, then go up to Mount Moriah Cemetery, where he lies near Calamity Jane, with a view over the town's brick facades. From there we drop into Spearfish Canyon, a gorge cut by Spearfish Creek between limestone walls, with short stops at Roughlock Falls and the roadside Bridal Veil Falls. Lunch is in the town of Spearfish at the canyon's mouth, then it is about an hour on the interstate to Rapid City Regional Airport, arriving around 3:30 pm. Your guide sees you to the terminal and checks your flight before saying goodbye. If you are going on to our Yellowstone and Grand Teton trip, that one starts in Bozeman: ask us about the flight and the nights between.

   Included

   • Deadwood's Main Street with your guide
   • Mount Moriah Cemetery
   • Spearfish Canyon, Roughlock Falls and Bridal Veil Falls
   • Sit-down lunch in Spearfish
   • Drop-off at Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)

   Easier option: If your flight leaves before about 5 pm, we skip Spearfish Canyon and go from Deadwood to the airport, about an hour.

   Activity: Book a flight leaving after about 5 pm to see everything today.

   

Wildlife and weather: May and early June can bring cool, wet days and even late snow in the hills. July and August are hot in the Badlands, often above 32 C, with afternoon thunderstorms, so we walk early and late and rest at midday. September is settled and quieter; Custer State Park rounds up its bison in late September. Bison, pronghorn and prairie dogs are seen in every month we run, but sightings are never promised.

• Rapid City1 night
• Badlands1 night
• Keystone3 nights