Mt Rushmore/Badlands/Custer State Park - all in 1 day!

Bucket list check - Mt Rushmore!

Ken and I visited South Dakota in September 2020 (yes in the Pandemic) - while I would recommend more time in this beautiful state, we only had a weekend (but one full day) to see the sites before we continued onto Montana/Wyoming.

We flew into Rapid City and stayed at the historic Alex Johnson hotel right in the heart of Rapid City (great location for our adventures). The hotel was a great location but wasn’t the nicest. I am not sure if I can attribute that to the pandemic and staffing, or in general (and this post is old so could have been updated). Regardless it was our home base for 2 nights. (They did have a fun rooftop bar too!) https://www.alexjohnson.com/

Protip: Check out the America the Beautiful Park Pass - we bought this and saved us money throughout our journey - some parks accept and some don’t but will save you money regardless.

Sat AM, BRIGHT AND EARLY - Pro tip - see the sun rise at Mt Rushmore. This was perfect for us as we had a full day planned, and there were hardly any other tourists there at this time.

Next stop: Crazy Horse. We opted for a quick drive by instead of taking the time. We did research and while up close would have been impressive, we decided to take a quick picture and keep on moving.

We continued our journey to Custer State Park. Wow! Seeing all of the buffalo and other animals was a treat! There were many instances where they would just cross the road right in front of you. We kept our distance (unlike others we saw) - these animals can certainly be dangerous and better to be viewed from a safe distance. We meandered through the park and pulled off for many photo ops.