South Dakota Black Hills

Planning a trip for July to the black hills.  Recommendations on best places to stay with a 28 ft bumper travel trailer.  We would like to see a few different places.  I have tentatively looked at Packtola Campground, part of the black hills national forest.  Legion lake campground in Custer state park.  A friend mentioned Hill City KOA.  I have been to this area several times.  First time bringing our children and our camper.  We previously tent camped this trip .


Thank you in advance.

Call now if you want to stay in Custer State Park.  Most sites get sucked up by Rapid City people.  Welcome to the Forum.

with kids you can't go wrong with beaver lake campground in custer. they have a pool w/slide, bikes for the kids and a few rabbit's for chasing.
i am an old guy but it is still my favorite.

Elkhorn Ridge is very nice. Right off I-90 near Spearfish. Don?t forget to eat at Pizza Ranch.

If you are going over July 4th you best make some reservations NOW. Very pretty area!

beaverfever said:

with kids you can't go wrong with beaver lake campground in custer. they have a pool w/slide, bikes for the kids and a few rabbit's for chasing.
i am an old guy but it is still my favorite.

Click to expand...

  )

If you are in late July, make reservations as the motorcycles going to Sturgis will fill up about every square inch in the campgrounds.

Bill

We also liked Beaver Lake. Our grandson loved the water slide (has a fee). The roaming bunnies were cute, too.

Bill N said:

If you are in late July, make reservations as the motorcycles going to Sturgis will fill up about every square inch in the campgrounds.

Bill

Click to expand...

And the private campground prices rocket!

Custer State Park is beautiful, look out for the eye of the needle road, it is spectacular but not for an RV!

Rafter J and Spearfish City Park are also nice campgrounds.

Here is my thread about my trip in the Black Hills and the Eclipse, last August.

http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,110023.msg991470.html#msg991470

As I noted in the thread, I stayed at Spearfish City Campground and rented a car. I was able to see a lot, and cover a lot of ground fairly quickly  Be aware that the Motorcycle Rally at Sturgis is August 3rd thru the 12th and that participants will begin to arrive one to two weeks earlier than that. About 400,000 people attend, so don't stay too late in July or you will be surrounded by bikers during your sightseeing drives.

Also, I am surprised that no one has mentioned the fire....... Basically the southern half of Custer State Park, along with a portion of Wind Cave National Park were involved in a fire Dec 11th to the 18th. 58,000 acres were burned, according to the fire maps I looked at, all of the area surrounding the Wildlife Loop was burned and the area from the Needles highway and to the east of it. Oddly they lost no buildings.

This article says 54,000 acres, I have seen several different numbers. Also there was a fire in September in Wind Cave Nat Park that burned about 8,000 acres.

Link to article..... http://wildfiretoday.com/tag/south-dakota/

Map of area burned,  http://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LegionLakeMap_12-20-2017.jpg

It appears a lot of the fire was a burnout of underbrush however I did see pictures of large areas of trees burning also. Damage was not as bad as it could have been.

With children do not miss the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs and also the Journey Museum in Rapid City, along with Devils Tower. Links are in my thread linked to above.

Have a good trip.

Charles
2007 Winnebago View 523H on a 2006 Dodge (Daimler-Chrysler aka Mercedes) Sprinter 3500 chassis (T1N). Bought Sept 2015 with 18K miles on it, Prog Ind HW30C, Prog Dymanics PD4645, Coleman Chill Grille, PML/Yourcovers.com deep alum trans pan, AutoMeter 8558 trans temp gauge, Roadmaster sway bar, Koni Red shocks (front & rear), Fantastic Ultra Breeze hood, added OEM parabolic mirrors and RH aspherical mirror, MB grill conversion.

Rafter J was great, and reasonably priced.

Legion lake was very nice but you have to put up with deer wandering in during the evening while you are sitting outside and buffalo wandering through or standing around down on the lawn area.   Be sure to take the kids on the wildlife drive. There was a free cut your own  firewood pile at the rear of the camp when we were there two years ago.