Are you looking to take a Family Road Trip through South Dakota? Are you wondering where you should go, what you should do & and what activities your family will like the most? That’s where I’d like to help.
In South Dakota you can explore incredibly diverse and breathtaking landscapes, learn some fascinating U.S. history or even drive along side a herd of wild bison. But on top of this, you can also go to an incredibly fun chuckwagon dinner or even visit a real active dig site with the largest concentration of Columbian Mammoth fossils in the world! There are just so many options to choose from.
Below, you’ll find what we feel are the top sites to visit in the Mount Rushmore area of South Dakota. You’ll also find information for planning your trip and even tips on how to best visit this incredible area in 1 week!
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Sites in this Post:
Planning Your South Dakota Road Trip:
If Arriving by Airplane:
Fly into Rapid City, SD or to Denver, CO (Denver is cheaper but know that it is a 6 hour drive each way to Mt Rushmore)
Fun Family Experiences:
Chuckwagon Cookout and Hayride
Time Needed:
The area around Mt. Rushmore needs at least 4 (maybe 5 days, to do everything listed here), plus 2 days allotted for your flight/ drive time.
Major Events:
Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is in this area usually in August, check the exact date if you want to avoid or attend this crowded event.
The Buffalo Round Up is another major event and this is usually in September.
*Map:
Use this map to help plan your route.
https://gfp.sd.gov/userdocs/docs/custer-map.pdf
Top South Dakota Sites:
Mount Rushmore, South Dakota
First, I want to start with the main reason most people visit South Dakota to vacation, Mt. Rushmore.
Mount Rushmore National Memorial is an Iconic American Monument, carved by Gutzon Borglum into the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1941. This magnificent sculpture memorializes George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. It honors their importance in American History.
Standing in the presence of this enormous monument is an unbelievable feeling. The time, the effort and the skill that was used to create Mt. Rushmore is truly amazing.
How to Get to Mount Rushmore:
Drive Iron Mountain Road (US Hwy 16 A)
This road is 17 miles long, has 314 curves and 14 switch backs. The speed limit is 20 mph and it takes ~60 minutes to drive. Iron Mountain Road is a very windy road that passes through 3 granite tunnels. These tunnels beautifully frame Mount Rushmore and that’s the main reason I recommend to drive this road to reach this monument. It’s the perfect first view!
Please note that the narrowest tunnel is only 13′ wide X 11′ high. Check your vehicle size if there is any question.
Also, go slow on this windy road. Opening windows, sucking on hard candy or chewing gum may be needed if you or your family is prone to queasiness. You may also want to have some Dramamine for kids with you if car sickness has been a problem in the past.
Things To Do at Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore itself is free to see but there is a $10 fee to park.
Visit the Lincoln Borgum Visitor Center
- Watch the impressive 14 minute film on how Mt. Rushmore was carved.
- We were really impressed by the skill and effort involved in creating this humongous monument. I had no idea that 90% of Mt. Rushmore was carved using dynamite! What an incredible skill!
The Perfect Spot for Lunch – Carver’s Cafe
- The food here was very good, but the real attraction for us was the large glass windows that provide a fantastic view of the monument while you eat!
The view from right outside of Carver’s Cafe
Hike Presidential Trail
- We loved this easy 0.6 mile trail!
- Please note that there are 422 stairs on the trail that will allow you to get up close to the mountain sculpture.
View from Presidential Trail! Now that’s close!
Don’t forget to stop by the ice cream shop and try the Vanilla Ice Cream based off the original recipe from Thomas Jefferson! This was a family favorite! And we all still talk about how amazing it was to try this taste of history!
Fun Fact: Thomas Jefferson brought the first written recipe for ice cream to America in 1780.
Eating Thomas Jefferson’s vanilla ice cream recipe in front of Mt Rushmore!
History Behind Why These Four Individuals Were Chosen:
George Washington
George Washington led the colonists in the American Revolutionary War to win independence from Great Britain and was the first president of the United States. He was chosen to represent the birth of the United States.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, doubled the size of our country with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 and was the third president of the United States. He was chosen to represent the growth of the United States.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States and is known for holding the nation together during the American Civil War. He was chosen to represent the preservation of the United States.
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States and is known for his leadership during America’s period of rapid economic growth. He is also considered the Father of America’s National Parks. During his presidency he established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks and 18 national monuments which protected over 230 million acres of public land. Theodore Roosevelt was chosen to represent the development of the United States.
Get Kids Excited to Visit!
Time Needed:
We spent 3 hours here – This included time to eat lunch, have an ice cream snack, watch the video in the visitor center, and walk presidential trail.
Tip:
Arrive early because this is a busy tourist destination and it will become packed by mid-day.
More Information:
https://www.nps.gov/moru/index.htm
Sylvan Lake
Sylvan lake is a 30 minute drive (15.2 miles) from Mt. Rushmore.
Upon my first glimpse of Sylvan Lake, I was stopped dead in my tracks. This lake is incredible! I was in complete awe of the stunning rock formations that surrounded this lake. They are spectacular! Immediately we knew that we wanted to walk the 1 mile trail that circles this lake.
The Trail
This trail was a Blast! The trail itself is easy and flat but the amazing rocks that line the trail are just begging to be climbed on.
So if you have kids that are anything like mine, plan a little extra time for exploring and climbing on these incredible boulders.
Time Needed
We spent ~1hr 30min here. This included our rock exploring adventures.
Fun Fact:
National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets was filmed here! We had a great time looking for its mythical city of gold!
Side note:
We saw several people swimming here. Being from Florida we thought they were crazy to be swimming in such cold water, but the people swimming seemed to be having fun.
Facilities:
There are restrooms and a gift shop here beside the lake’s parking lot.
Needles Highway
From Sylvan Lake get on SD-87 S (Needles Hwy) for 14 miles.
Wow! This best explains my thoughts while driving along Needles Highway! Incredible granite spires, extremely narrow tunnels and amazing views will simply leave you in awe on this 14 mile road. Mother Nature definitely had fun when designing this landscape!
Needles Eye Tunnel
Needles Highway takes about 60 minutes to drive, but it can take longer if a larger vehicle has a problem getting through the one-way Needles Eye Tunnel.
This happened to us. A tour group had a bus that only had inches to spare on either side as they tried to squeeze through this incredibly narrow tunnel!
Needles Eye Tunnel is one of three tunnels on this road. This famous tunnel is only 8’4″ wide x 11’3″ high!
Needles Highway (SD Hwy 87) was completed in 1922 and connects Sylvan Lake to Custer State Park.
Custer State Park
Map: https://gfp.sd.gov/userdocs/docs/custer-map.pdf
Bison Everywhere!
Custer State Park is home to one of the largest herds of American Bison in the World (~1400)! I was overwhelmed with how many bison we saw here! They were everywhere!
If you’re looking to view these magnificent herds too, make sure you drive around during the morning hours or just before sunset in the evening.
But please stay in your car and watch these magnificent and powerful animals from a distance. They are wild and nobody wants to get hurt while on vacation.
Watching these enormous herds will be an experience that your family is not likely to forget!
Great Books for Kids on the American Bison:
The Buffalo are Back by Jean Craighead George
Wildlife Loop Road
Wildlife Loop Road is an 18 mile loop road in Custer State Park. This road is supposed to be great for seeing animals. For many people it is, but unfortunately for us we saw almost no animals the morning we drove it.
The pictures of Bison above are all from driving the main roads in the park or from our Hayride and Chuckwagon Dinner.
Time Needed:
~1hr and 30 minutes to drive Wildlife Loop Road. (depending on “wildlife jams”)
Animals you may Encounter:
Free roaming bison (the park has between 1,000-1,400 on average), white tailed deer, mule deer, elk, prairie dogs, or some of the parks feral burros.
If you are lucky you may even see a big horned sheep, a coyote or a mountain lion.
We couldn’t believe this incredible sight! (See above)
Events like this is what traveling is all about! Discovering the unknown, learning about our world and creating everlasting memories!
Here a coyote and a herd of deer showed us that the world doesn’t always work the way we think it should (deer chasing away and barking at a coyote, really???) We also learned that some animals are not as helpless as we originally thought. And here also we created an everlasting memory that we will talk about years to come.
Custer State Park is a great place to create your own everlasting memories with your family on a South Dakota road trip.
Custer State Park costs $20 for a weekly vehicle pass.
More information on Custer State Park: https://gfp.sd.gov/parks/detail/custer-state-park/
Hotel: Blue Bell Lodge
The room was perfect for our family of five and that night our Hayride and Chuckwagon Dinner left from our hotel’s lobby!
This made it the perfect place to stay on our South Dakota Family Vacation!
Hotel: https://custerresorts.com/lodges-and-cabins/blue-bell-lodge/
Hayride and Chuckwagon Cookout
Find buffalo while you enjoy your hayride!
This Hayride and Chuckwagon Dinner is an incredible family experience that I would recommend to anyone!
Begin your journey on a 45 minutes hayride through Custer State Park where you will sing traditional cowboy songs, listen to stories about the area and possibly find one of the bison herds roaming by.
An Added Bonus!
To add to the atmosphere, each person receives their very own cowboy hat and bandanna! Our children thought that this was the best! Next, you will arrive at your cookout dinner. There is a wonderful selection of food so fill up your plate and dine out in the open. As you eat you will be entertained with folk music and cowboy songs.
This experience was definitely a highlight for our family and I highly recommend an experience like this for any South Dakota road trip!
The Badlands
The Badlands is an incredible landscape that is less than 1 hr and 30 minutes from Mt. Rushmore and Custer State Park!
Drive Badlands Loop Road, hike through this unreal landscape and gaze in awe at the beautiful colors that dance across these rocks at sunset!
We love the Badlands and highly recommend going to anyone on a South Dakota Family Vacation!
Time Needed:
~1 day, with staying overnight preferred to beat the heat and to best experience the colors of the Badlands.
Hotel:
We stayed at Cedar Pass Lodge and loved it!
Mammoth Site at Hot Springs
The Mammoth Site is ~40 mins from Custer Sate Park and just over an hour from Mt. Rushmore. Mammoth Site at Hot Springs has the largest concentration of Columbian Mammoth fossils in the world!
We were seriously impressed with this active dig site!
It was amazing to learn why over 50 different animal species (many extinct today) and at least 61 different mammoths have been found in this one spot!
Seeing these fossils still immersed in the rock, just waiting to be carefully dug out, helped us realize all of the hard work that goes into creating the fossil structures that we find in museums everywhere today.
I couldn’t believe it when they told us that they have been excavating this site for 46 years and that they haven’t even uncovered a quarter of what’s here!
I truly feel that Mammoth Site at Hot Springs would be a perfect addition to any South Dakota Family Vacation!
Time Needed:
Join the 30 minute guided tour and see the 10 minute video.
Allow ~1 hour to visit
Website: mammothsite.org
Discover More About Prehistoric Animals:
Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming
(Yes, Wyoming)
Devils Tower is ~2 hours and 30 minutes from Mount Rushmore. (It’s over 7 hours from Yellowstone, WY yet it is an easy day trip from Mount Rushmore.)
Steven Spielberg fans will likely recognize this incredible tower that was featured in the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Out of nowhere this spectacular tower emerges from the plains.
Rising 1,267 feet above the northeastern plains of Wyoming, geologist believe that this natural phenomenon occurred from molten rock pushing up into the sedimentary rock ~50 million years ago and then cooling. About 5 to 10 million years ago, erosion of the land surrounding began to reveal this incredible tower.
Devils Tower is a phenomenon that I don’t think exists anywhere else in the world!
Walk the Trail
To best experience this monument walk the 1.3 mile easy trail that circles it’s base. This hike takes ~45 minutes to walk and here you will realize just how big and impressive this tower really is!
Fun Fact:
A clerical error was made that forgot the apostrophe when naming Devils Tower. This error was never corrected and to this day the tower is still called Devils Tower.
Devils Tower was also America’s first national monument.
It’s hard to really comprehend just how large Devils Tower is until you get right up next to it! Wow!!! Standing here, looking up at this tower, left us completely speechless.
Side note:
We did not climb the rocks in the picture above with our three children. This is off the main trail and is at your own risk. To us it looked too dangerous to tackle with a 5, 7 and 9 year old, but as you can see there were lots of people climbing the rocks in this area.
I know that this is a decent drive from Mt. Rushmore but I really think that Devils Tower should be on anyone’s list when visiting the Mt. Rushmore area of South Dakota. This Tower is Incredible!
Our Itinerary
Day 1:
- Arrived in the Badlands (on the east side) in time to watch the evening colors emerge.
- Hotel in Badlands National Park or in the nearby town of Wall, SD
Day 2:
- Drove through the Badlands National Park. Picnic lunch.
- Hiked Door Trail (am), Fossil Exhibit Trail, Castle Trail (part)
- Drove 1 hr to Hotel in Rapid City, SD
- We went to Bear Country USA this evening.
Day 3:
- Drove 2hr 15 min to Devils Tower, WY.
- Hiked Tower Trail at Devils Tower.
- Drove through Spearfish Canyon. Saw Roughlock Falls.
- Hotel at Blue Bell Lodge or a Hotel near Custer, SD
- Evening Chuckwagon Cookout through Blue Bell Lodge
Day 4:
- Custer State Park – Drove Wildlife Loop Rd (early morning). Then drove Iron Mountain Rd to get to Mount Rushmore.
- Hiked Presidential Trail at Mount Rushmore, lunch & Thomas Jefferson’s ice cream. (~3 hours here)
- Drove to Sylvan Lake (hiked around the lake).
- Drove Needles Highway
- Headed down to Mammoth Site at Hot Springs. (~1 hour) (This was close to closing but we had plenty of time here.)
- Hotel in Hot Springs, SD
Day 5:
- Travel Day – to head back home or continue on your trip.
Small Road Trip Toys for Kids!
Brainteaser PuzzleOur Favorite Pocket Travel Toy
Our Favorite Brain Teaser
Our Favorite Art Travel Set
More Great Sites For a South Dakota Road Trip:
- Jewel Cave National Monument –https://www.nps.gov/jeca/index.htm
- Spearfish Canyon – https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/blackhills/specialplaces/?cid=stelprdb5063002
- Big Thunder Gold Mine – http://www.bigthundermine.com/
- Bear Country USA – https://www.bearcountryusa.com/
- Reptile Gardens – https://www.reptilegardens.com/
Family Fun:
Junior Ranger Program
We Love the Junior Ranger Programs! Your kids will love becoming Junior Rangers at Mount Rushmore, Badlands National Park and Devils Tower. Just stop by the visitor centers and pick up their Junior Ranger Booklets. Have your children complete the activities marked for their age and they can earn their official Junior Ranger Badges! They will learn so much about where they are at and you will too!
The Junior Ranger Program is an amazing way for families to learn all about where they are visiting. The activities are designed for children with categories up to 13+. Our kids loved earning these badges and they are a great keepsake. These badges also saved us many a trip to the gift shop for a souvenir. I love how this program really gets kids thinking about where they are and helps them to appreciate their experience in that national park.
Our Kid’s Favorite Books for our South Dakota Road Trip
- Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine
- Daily Life in a Covered Wagon by Paul Erickson
- If You Lived With the Sioux Indians by Ann Mcgovern
- Buffalo Before Breakfast (Magic Tree House) by Mary Pop Osborne
- Babies of the Badlands by Kat Socks
South Dakota Family Road Trip
I hope you found the information that you were looking for in this South Dakota road trip guide.
Have an Incredible Trip with Your Traveling Feet!
South Dakota Road Trip Summer Gear We Love:
POPULAR TOURS IN SOUTH DAKOTA
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Related Posts For Nearby Sites:
- The Badlands: Tops Family Sites & Hikes You Shouldn’t Miss!
- How to Hike at the Incredible Devils Tower with Kids!
- Discovering Scott’s Bluff National Monument with Kids
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2 comments
Just wanted to take a second and say how much I enjoyed your post. My family leaves in a couple of days and I was very worried we had tried to cram in too many sites over our 12 day journey, but your itinerary gave me a boost of confidence! Thanks,
Hillery from Huntsville AL
I’m so glad our itinerary could help you. I hope you and your family have a fantastic trip!! -Jenny