After eight days in Sioux Falls and four days in Pierre, our third stop in South Dakota was Rapid City where we stayed for ten days.
When we arrived we saw that the weather forecast for the first five days was good, with rain forecast for the second half of our time there. We therefore decided to frontload our activities so that we could do as much as possible while the sun was still shining.
Here’s a roundup of everything we did there.
Where We Stayed In Rapid City
When I first started researching our accommodation options in Rapid City, I’d come across a great property on Airbnb which is a converted motel that now has a bunch of one bedroom suites with kitchens. Unfortunately by the time I came to book that they didn’t have any rooms available for all ten days that we’d be in Rapid City.
Instead, we turned to the Residence Inn Rapid City which ended up being a fantastic alternative. We were able to get a one bedroom suite for a reasonable price, it was a nice, new hotel with some great amenities and truly excellent service. Check out my full review here.
Things To Do In Rapid City
Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Mount Rushmore is a 40 minute drive southwest of Rapid City and was more impressive in person than I’d anticipated it to be. I thought that it was going to be something we’d drive up to, look at for a minute or two and then get on our way, but there’s much more to it than that. That includes a trail taking you closer to the memorial, a museum area with information about how it was constructed and more. Read this post for more about our trip to Mount Rushmore.
Crazy Horse Memorial
About 30 minutes southwest of Mount Rushmore is the Crazy Horse Memorial. An Oglala Lakota chief called Henry Standing Bear petitioned to have Crazy Horse – a former leader of the Oglala Lakota – carved on to Mount Rushmore.
That was done to no avail, so he subsequently recruited a Polish-American sculptor called Korczak Ziolkowski to carve a sculpture of Crazy Horse on Thunderhead Mountain instead. Construction began in 1948 and was originally anticipated to take three decades. Progress has unfortunately been much slower than that and so there’s still a long way to go.
Badlands National Park
An hour east of Rapid City is Badlands National Park. It’s a park with beautiful landscape with all kinds of rock formations and colorings.
It seems like it could be a fun place to go hiking, but we visited with our dog and they’re not allowed on trails, so we just stuck to the main road running through the park. See this post for more about Badlands National Park.
Presidential Statues
In downtown Rapid City there are 43 bronze statues of past presidents. They’re located along Main St and St Joseph St not too far from each other, so it doesn’t take too long to find them all, but are a great way to explore downtown a little at the same time. Check out this post for more about those statues and where they’re all located.
Custer State Park
About an hour south of Rapid City is the incredibly beautiful Custer State Park – my new favorite state park. It has lakes, hiking, scenic drives, rock formations, wildlife and so much more – it’s hard to think of ways it could be better. Check out this post for more about why we loved Custer State Park and this post for more about its Wildlife Loop Road.
Dahl’s Chainsaw Art
On the way up to Mount Rushmore, we stopped at Dahl’s Chainsaw Art in Keystone. The carvings are incredible and they have the world’s largest Bigfoot.
Where We Ate & Drank
Hay Camp Brewing
While drinking at Glacial Lakes Distillery in Sioux Falls, we got chatting to a couple who recommended that we check out Hay Camp Brewing in Rapid City while we were there. That’s located downtown, so we went there after finding all the presidential statues because it’s pet-friendly and we had Truffles with us.
Hay Camp had a good selection of darker beers which I prefer, so I was pleased to see that they offered an option to get a beer flight so I could easily try them all. The beers were all OK, but not particularly memorable. We did have a fun time though chatting to a couple the next table over.
Bokujo Ramen
A different night we headed back downtown to have dinner at Bokujo Ramen. If you ever watch the Food Network, you might be familiar with Chef Justin Warner. Well, this is his restaurant which is why we wanted to check it out.
He sadly wasn’t working that night, but the food was tasty and Shae and I had a great time. Check out our full review here.
Prairie Berry Winery
After exploring Custer State Park, we decided to stop at Prairie Berry Winery in Hill City to do some wine tasting.
We had a lovely time chatting to Jennifer who was serving the wine at the counter inside, then we headed outside to take advantage of the great weather. I was the designated driver, so Shae got to take advantage of their Buy One, Get One Free drinks promotion herself!
What We Didn’t Do
The western side of South Dakota has a ton of attractions, but our time and budget didn’t allow us to do all of them. Here are some things we missed out on, but which you might want to check out when visiting Rapid City and that general area:
- Minuteman Missile National Historic Site
- The Mammoth Site
- Jewel Cave National Monument – it’s apparently the third longest cave in the world
- Wind Cave National Park
- Cosmos Mystery Area
- Bear Country USA
- Reptile Gardens
- Museum of Geology – it’s free to visit
- Dinosaur Park
- The Journey Museum & Learning Center
- Boss’ Pizza & Chicken – Marcus at the Residence Inn we stayed at highly recommended this, but we ran out of time to eat there
We a planning a family trip to South Dakota in August, so I’ve been reading your posts and taking lots of notes. Thanks so much for all the great information and beautiful pics! It sounds like you had a great time in SD.
Awesome, I’m glad it’s been helpful with your planning. We definitely enjoyed our time in South Dakota far more than we were expecting and it’s somewhere we’d be happy to head back to in the future. I hope you enjoy it this summer as much as we did 🙂
So happy to see Dahls still there. I have a carved bear from them on my porch.
That’s so cool! I was curious how many of them they sell to people who are just visiting South Dakota as some of the art is huge and so would presumably cost a lot to get shipped to their home.