Black Hills National Forest

July 18th

We left Devil’s tower and drove to Rapid City, SD, where we found Mia some hiking boots with ankle support. Kathy called the National Parks, to see if we could get a campground in the Black Hills National Forest, but the ranger said that everything was full. He also said that most of the campgrounds have some first-come first-serve sights. We took our chances and picked out one of the closest campgrounds to Mount Rushmore, and headed there. We were in luck again! 3 sites left. We are at Horse Thief Lake Campground. The campground is in pine forest with a beautiful lake. As soon as we set up our site, we all walked down to the lake and went swimming. After 4 days of temperatures in the high 90’s, it felt magnificent. This is the first state that is allowing campfires. Apparently, South Dakota has been receiving a lot of rain. Another day and another afternoon thunder storm. Luckily not like the first one.

July 19th

The Black Hills National Park is beautiful. However, it has been so commercialized that it feels like a giant amusement park. Mount Rushmore is stunning in person, but if you want to see it closer, you have to pay $10 to park. They have blocked off all other turn-outs along the highway, so you have to go to the pay parking lot, which is a 3-story monstrosity. All of the towns in and out of the park are tourist traps, with wild west towns, zip lining, water slides, roller coasters, candy stores, shopping malls, miniature golf and more, all themed after something in the Black Hills. If you threw in a Mickey Mouse, you would swear this was Disney land. Yet, worst of all are the Helicopter tours. Our campground has this magnificent lake, Horse Thief Lake, and we spent all afternoon swimming and kayaking. The highway goes along one side of the lake, and it is unending cars, just like Yellowstone, but the constant stream of helicopters flying over is too much. I’m guessing that is why there is not a lot of wildlife around. The helicopters start at 8am, and we see them every 15 minutes until dusk. If I weren’t sitting near the lake surrounded by trees, I could swear I was in a city. Enough complaining. Black Hills National Park, and our campground Horse Thief campground, could easily be one of the best places I have been, if it weren’t for what I mentioned above (oh, also the camp hosts are not nice).

We did have a great day at the lake. There are some granite rocks that we kayaked to, then climbed and jumped into the lake. Kathy swam all the way across the lake. Even Oreo swam for a while. Good day.

July 20th

The trails in the park are great. We took a small two-mile hike this morning. The scenery is spectacular and it felt more like we were in a national park. However, the helicopter noise still persisted. After the hike, we were all hot, so we spent the rest of the afternoon swimming and kayaking on the lake.