Rapid City

Since beginning our full-time journey to discover the country, we have found something to appreciate in every city and town we have passed through. We hope you enjoy reading about them as much as we have enjoyed discovering them!

No person, business or attraction has paid us for an endorsement.

Population: 76,541
Founded: 1876
Average income: $29,180
Average price of housing: $323,030
Median age of the population: 37
https://www.visitrapidcity.com/

Geographically Rapid City is located in southwestern South Dakota. It is surrounded by the prairies, the Badlands National Park and the Black Hills National Forest. In many ways, Rapid City is a hub for many smaller cities that are within an hour of downtown Rapid City. In addition to Rapid City, we visited the nearby towns of Deadwood, Nemo, Sturgis and Hill City.

Home Base: The Campground

For us, a campground is not our destination. Our RV is self-contained. Rarely do we use campground services or amenities. We are explorers, not campground reviewers! We stayed on site 121 at the Rapid City/Black Hills KOA in Rapid City. The campground was clean and well maintained. The staff was friendly. Our full hook up (water-sewer-electric) site was on level gravel. Our pull through site was long enough to leave the Jeep hooked up and still have both vehicles off the road. 30 and 50 amp service was available. There was good cell phone coverage (Verizon) and a good open southern sky for our satellite.

Downtowns

Dave and I always seek out downtowns. To us, downtowns are the heart and soul of a city or town. A nice downtown and we will explore more. A forgotten or nonexistent downtown and we will move along.

Deadwood: A wonderful smaller eclectic downtown with thriving locally owned shops, businesses and restaurants. Downtown also includes an elementary school, many hotels and numerous casinos. Somehow, it all seemed to fit together. There was even a herd of curly horn sheep randomly wandering through town! Deadwood is known as the town where Wild Bill Hickok was murdered. There is a “cowboy shootout” in downtown at 2, 4, and 6 p.m. everyday. Deadwood has made a wonderful 2.7 miles walking path along the banks of the Whitewood Creek Trail. Definite place to visit!

Hill City: Busy, thriving downtown with mostly locally owned shops, businesses and restaurants. Lots of stores to buy touristy items like Sturgis t-shirts and shot glasses with Hill City stamped on them.

Rapid City: RC has a rather long downtown with two one-way streets. Lots of stores, business and restaurants. Plenty of metered parking. It was fun to stroll the downtown area and see all of the bronze statues of the Presidents.

Sturgis: Downtown Sturgis is pretty much what I would imagine. It has a rather wide downtown street with many small locally owned stores, businesses and restaurants. We were in Sturgis on the day of a big Mustang Rally, so downtown was closed off to traffic. Quaint area.

Food and Drink

We always gravitate toward small locally owned restaurants. These were some we tried:

Custer State Park: The State Game Lodge was built in 1920 of native stone and wood. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Lodge served as the summer White House for President Calvin Coolidge in 1927 and was visited by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. The food bar was diverse with even options of buffalo meat!

Deadwood: Mineral Palace offers casual dining on the second floor (the first floor is a casino).

Hill City: Bumpin Buffalo Bar and Grill. Reported to be the highest rated restaurant in Hill City. It is a busy place! Buffalo burgers were made with a fresh patty.

Rapid City: We ate at the Colonial House Restaurant. It is a highly rated local restaurant. When we visited, there was a tour bus of people, but we still got our food quickly!

Sturgis: Uncle Louie’s Diner appears to be a local hangout. Burgers were large and flavorful.

Attractions

Hill City: The 1880 Train is the oldest continuously running standard gauge excursion train in the world. It gives a narrated 20 mile trip between Hill City and Keystone. There are open air and closed passenger cars. We rode in Mystic, one of the open air cars. Very fun and informative. Highly recommend.

Rapid City: There are so many things to see in the area, we decided to take an all day tour hosted by Mt. Rushmore Tours. Matt was our very knowledgeable, informative and funny tour guide and bus driver. There are many stops along the way for breaks and pictures. We highly recommend this tour! There are 6 main stops along the way:

• Mt. Rushmore: massive, amazing
• Iron Mountain Road: scary
• Custer State Park: we saw a buffalo!
• Needles Highway: scary, pigtails and switchbacks
• Sylvan Lake: picturesque
• Crazy Horse: inspiring

Nemo: Black Hills National Forest driving tour

Rapid City: Fort Hayes

• Buffalo Hunt
• Chuckwagon Supper and Variety Music Show
• Dances with Wolves set

Rapid City: Chapel in the Hills was an all wooden chapel built in 1969 as a ministry of the Lutheran Church. This “Stavkirke” is an exact replica of the famous Borgund Stavkirke in Laerdal Norway in the 1100s. On Sundays, Wednesday and Saturdays during the summer you can still attend services.

Rapid City: Mt. Rushmore Candy. Lots of candies you can buy by the pound. Chocolate dipped treats including chocolate dipped bacon and chocolate dipped pickles! Oh my!

Sturgis: Full Throttle Saloon is actually in Vale, SD and next to Bear Brute. The FTS promotes itself as the epicenter of the infamous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally held every August. Approximately 700,000 descend on Sturgis (population 6,900) and the FTS. From actually seeing Sturgis, we can’t imagine how all those people fit in a very small town!! There was a 6 season TV show we watched called Full Throttle Saloon (2009 to 2015).

Fun Facts

• Rapid City was named for Rapid Creek, the limestone spring stream that passes through the city.
  
• The two long, one short, one long train blasts at train crossings represent the letter Q. It actually originated from when the Queen of England would travel anywhere by boat. If another boat was approaching, the boat would blast the “Q” signal to let everyone know the queen was aboard and to yield the right of way to her ship. Trains wants motorists to yield the right of way to them, so the railroad adopted it for them!
  
• An interesting thing was the number of “stash piles” of brush. A while back trees were being infested by beetles. The national park service went through the forest and cut down the infected trees. They then sold the fallen trees to lumbermills. The lumbermills bought the biggest, straightest trees but left much behind. The forest service then let locals go in for free and salvage whatever wood they wanted to burn for their personal use. Whatever the locals didn’t want, they left in sometimes huge “stash piles” for compost.
  
• The Black Hills were named for the ponderosa pines all along the mountains. The needles of the ponderosa pine are flat on one side and can look black if you look at the tree from afar.

Summary

We stayed for two weeks in Rapid City, and we still didn’t get a chance to see everything we wanted to see, or explore everywhere on “our list”. (Easy How To Guide For Exploring) When going to Rapid City, while there are many, many amazing outdoor activities, it is still a city built on tourism. Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse have attracted visitors for decades, and many other tourist attractions have grown up in the area, too. There are many things to do and see in the Rapid City area.

If you have any interest in seeing the National Wind Cave or the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, make your reservations more than 6 months out of your arrival date. Tour times fill up very ridiculously fast. And as late as September 2022 be aware that any federal building or historic site, for example, Wind Cave or the Mount Rushmore Museum or any gift shop or information center at a federal location, still requires you to wear a mask. Even if you made a reservation when masks weren’t required.

The scenery in this geographic area is absolutely amazing. Pictures and 10,000 words do not accurately describe the majesty of the area. If you haven’t been, it should be on your bucket list!

Your partners in travel,
Kathryn, Dave and Lucky
RVing Nomads

It’s a lifestyle

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