Missed State Park Opportunities
We explore Custer State Park
Summer means travel for my family. It also means that between commentary on life, social issues, and our years living in Texas, I will deliver two to three posts a month about our family’s summer travels until the end of the year.
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When I started planning our summer vacation to Yellowstone, one of my South Dakota goals was to camp at Custer State Park. We were planning to be in the Black Hills around the Fourth of July, so I knew we would need to reserve our stay earlier than later. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize Custer State Park opens up camping reservations one year in advance.
It was an oversight I regretted the moment we entered the state park upon our arrival in the Black Hills.
We headed to Custer State Park after we left Crazy Horse Memorial. We still had plenty of sunlight and weren’t quite done exploring for the day. We knew our next day would be reserved for a cave tour and visit to Mount Rushmore, so we decided to make the most of our afternoon and see what we were missing by not getting a coveted reservation.
We were missing a lot.
Custer State Park is the eighth-largest state park in the country and the largest state park we have ever visited. That’s saying a lot coming from a family that spent the better part of six years trying to visit every state park possible in Texas.
As we entered the park, we had to decide which region to explore, opting for the Wildlife Loop Road with hopes we would see more bison up close. Instead, we found prairie dog settlements, rolling pine-covered hills, and the gorgeous and informative Bison Center, which presents information on the restoration of bison in the park and the management system in place to keep the herds healthy.
But our real explorations of the state park took place the following day after we left our Jewel Cave Tour.
Jeff’s sister Kristen—who had originally planned to join us on our summer vacation but at the last minute decided she couldn’t—had asked us if we were going to do the Needles Highway drive. We knew far too little about the state park before our vacation to give her a definite answer. When Jeff looked it up while we were in the Badlands, he decided we had to do it. Our original plan had been to do it earlier in the day, but with the shoe debacle before our Jewel Cave tour, our drive was postponed, so we entered the state park after massive storms had worked their way through the region.
While we waited for our tour at Jewel Cave, we could hear the constantly rolling thunder, but since all we ever saw was pea-sized hailstones, we figured the rest of the region got much of the same.
We were wrong. As we entered Custer, we found gumball-sized hail blanketing the ground. Jeff pulled off to the side of the road so we could take a closer look. Apparently, we hadn’t seen the worst part of the storm.
Jeff drove up the Needles Highway and we watched thick pine forests rush past us as he took the truck around tight curves and bends. We stopped to drive past the Black Hills Playhouse and then the Center Lake campground, temporarily thankful we weren’t staying in the state park when we saw the number of campers packing up tents and pop-ups as they assessed hail damage.
But when we pulled off to the parking lot for Center Lake, we reconsidered. This is what we were missing by not staying in the state park.
Despite the hailstone divots in the sand, the lake was stunning and surprisingly warm. The regional highs had hovered around 70 during our stay in the Black Hills, but the lake was still inviting and we probably would have wanted to go swimming if we were camping nearby. We were only a few miles into our drive on Needles and we were back to longing for a campsite unavailable to us.
Then we continued up the highway.
We had told the kids the beauty they witnessed in the Badlands wouldn’t compare to what they would see in Yellowstone, which they found hard to believe. What Jeff and I didn’t know was the beauty along Needles would blow the Badlands out of the water and set the bar high for our trip to Yellowstone.
The further Jeff drove up the highway, the more we found to take our breath away. It wasn’t just the nerves from squeezing our way through three narrow tunnels; it was the rock peaks reaching to the now-blue sky. It was the canyons below. It was the realization that this was the most beautiful state park we had ever seen. It felt like we had left South Dakota behind entirely.
We ended our drive at Sylvan Lake, stopping to take it in. As our son and I walked along the lake path, we discovered even more to explore around the corner. The temperatures had dropped below 50 and I was thankful I had brought long sleeves along for the drive. Jeff gave up his jacket and handed it to our daughter, who gratefully took it as we continued as a family on the path toward the lake dam before turning around and stopping at the Sylvan Lake gift shop.
I don’t know if Jeff and I will ever get back to the Black Hills, but we have put Custer State Park on our wish list. It is beautiful and helped to put a bow on our short stay in the region.
And for more pictures and video of the drive through the park, check out the video below:
Do you want to know more about how I plan our vacations? Check out this blog post and get a copy of my planning spreadsheet below:
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