South Dakota: A Family’s Playground Part 3

Are you sick of the South Dakota posts yet? I sure hope not because they have been so fun to write! If you missed Part 1 and Part 2…make sure to check them out!  This will be the final installment of South Dakota: A Family’s Playground, but none the less it features two fantastic places: Needles Highway & Custer State Park!

Needles Highway – One day on our trip, we decided to take off to explore the Custer State Park Wildlife Loop and

after looking at the map from where we were starting at the Pulmer Gulch/Mount Rushmore KOA we decided to take Needles Highway on the way to Custer State Park.  I’ll admit that I really didn’t know what the heck that meant, but my mom was happy (as T drove she told him that he was making a childhood dream come true of seeing Needles Highway & Needles Point)!  We took off and enjoyed the scenery and marveled at what we saw.  From lakes to rock

formations to ledges and vegetation we soaked it all in.  The drive can be “treacherous” at times working your way up, down, up, and back down the switchbacks all the way to Needles Point (seemingly more difficult in a Ford F250 compared to a Ford Fiesta, but we made it).  Once at the “top” or Needles Point, you are amazed by the one lane rock tunnels, the views, and of course Needles Point itself.  The boys enjoyed climbing some of the formations and of course we did the one and only full group photo at the top!  The entire drive itself is about 14 miles long.

Custer State Park Wildlife Loop – once we descended from Needles Highway, we headed on to the Custer State Park Wildlife Loop.  Now, keep in mind that Needles Highway is also in the middle of Custer State Park, so while you’re not really leaving the area, it is amazing to see the differences between the rocky mountain sides of the

Highway versus the lush vegetation and plains area of the Wildlife Loop.  The Wildlife Loop is “long” (18 miles) and the wildlife seems to be concentrated in the same areas, but once you get to them its quite amazing.  We saw prong-horns, buffalo/bison, prairie dogs (the boys’ favorites), and burros.  The burros are tame enough that you can feed them if you so choose, but they guard against getting out of your vehicles near the buffalo.  They are truly majestic animals.

A few notes about these scenic drives.  By looking at the map, we anticipated that our day would last 2-3 hours max.  Well, let me tell you…we started out about 9:30 and finally arrived in Keystone for lunch at about 2:30PM!  We ended up not only traveling on Needles Highway and the Custer Wildlife Loop, but ended up traveling along Iron Mountain

Road.  This was another beautiful scenic drive with tunnels and birds eye views of Mount Rushmore, but it was also 17 miles long, so add up 14+18+17 = 49 miles and if you can only go a maximum of about 8 miles per hour through most of that because of the switch backs, one-lane tunnels and stopping to view animals…well, it takes a while!  We had a great time though..talking, laughing, and enjoyed the things we saw!  (You can imagine the conversations that took place with 6 people in the truck, 4 of which are guys!)  Thankfully we had drinks

and my mom was smart to pack a baggie of cookies, but we were all quite famished by the time we reached Keystone.  Another note is that there are far and few between bathrooms.  We took advantage of the bathrooms and gift shop at Sylvan Lake and some “rustic” (read: latrine) at a roadside stop!  It’s long, but we highly recommend the

drives!!