RV Lifestyle Custer State Park is one of the most beloved and diverse parks in the U. S. featuring breathtaking natural scenery, diverse wildlife and a wide range of outdoor activities. Composed of one of the oldest and most diverse geologic foundations in America that makes for hairpin curves and tunnels which you can follow for 22 kilometres along Needles Highway, Custer State Park is as much a natural treasure as any lands that make up America’s national parks. And you will no doubt eventually wonder why this spectacular landscape hasn’t been declared as one. Don’t worry about it: South Dakotans are perfectly content to manage it themselves and a great job they do indeed, with fine roads and an excellent tourism infrastructure. No matter the park’s official status – a few days or a week in and around these 28,732 hectares promise to reveal one adventure after another. Within the southern part of the Black Hills National Forest, the town of Custer serves as a gateway to the state park that lies just a few kilometres to the east. As your base, book yourself into the cute, family-run Bavarian Inn in the hills just outside of town. Another of all things named for the notorious commander around here, The Custer Wolf is a locally popular casual pub restaurant. Strolling Mount Rushmore Road – effectively Custer’s main street whose broad width was designed to allow oxen freight carts to turn around – you’ll delight in the town’s many fun and quirky brightly painted buffalo statues. Also there, Keely and Damien Mahony operate the Black Hills Balloons adventure outfit. The American wife and Irish husband’s crew will take you on a short, early-morning drive to a forest clearing while you watch the balloons get filled in anticipation of the launch of your hour-long flight. Below you, Black Hills ridges and valleys are filled with ponderosa pine as fog swirls around rock spires and rises from the surface of forest ponds below. After your flight, you’ll be ready for a hearty breakfast at Baker’s Bakery & Café hash house whose tagline – You’ll Love Our Buns – is placed under a cheeky logo of a waitress with baked buns peeking out from her skirt. For lunch or dinner, the Pounding Fathers Restaurant/Mt. Rushmore Brewing Company is the place to sample some of the dozens of Dakota state beers on draft. So massive is the complex, that you could get lost there after knocking back a few (opened seasonally from May through October). Just north of the Custer State Park boundaries book ahead for the super-popular 1880 Train that runs between the towns of Hill City and Keystone. You’ll think that you’re in an Old West movie when, at one point, the vintage train creates a steamy scene by blasting sand through the flues to clear soot, and whenever the tracks curve over the one-hour journey and one can spot the engine chugging along. Conductors with old-timey facial hair help set the mood. Custer State Park A Majestic Corner of South Dakota’s Black Hills Story and photos by Rex Vogel 20 | www.snowbirds.org
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