#1880 train

Photos featuring the locomotives of the Black Hills Central Railroad in Hill City, South Dakota and a ride on the "1880 Train" to Keystone, South Dakota.

Photos taken from 06/17/2026-06/18/2026

July 27, 2020

In keeping with my theme of posting a summary of each state, here we go with South Dakota. I’ve already posted about the not-so-bad Badlands and our mammoth experience.  What else did we do?

We stayed at a horse camp in the Black Hills (a mountain range that was created as a Rockies after-thought).  The ‘horse camp’ part of Broken Arrow Horse Camp honestly didn’t register in my reservation-making brain, but thank goodness it was the nicest/cleanest ‘horse camp’ in the country (that’s per the owner, Dan, who took it over 5 years ago and after a lengthy discussion with Bill, has him convinced owning and running an RV park in a seasonal location is our future dream).  So, for all you city people, a horse camp is somewhere people camp with their horses.  They pay extra for their horse to have a stable, and they usually have one of those fancy fifth wheel/horse trailer combo RVs. We enjoyed watching the horse care-taking process, visiting the stables, and hearing ‘neigh’ all day long.  The flies were bad, but according to Dan, very good for a horse camp.  He makes horse owners pick up the poop and he keeps all garbage far away, carting it off for you each morning in his golf cart (nice perk!).  It is a lovely RV park with quiet people, free DVDs, really nice grass, laundry, a playground, and nice showers.

So from our 6 nights at Broken Arrow Horse Camp, we explored the small Hill City, where the kids and Bill rode an old steam engine, and we had a lovely dinner at The Alpine Inn, recommended by Air Force friends who had been stationed at Ellsworth.  This place doesn’t take reservations, has 2 items on the dinner menu, and a 20 item dessert menu.  My kind of place!  The ENTIRE menu (i.e. filet mignon with wedge salad x 2, and German spaetzle) was super tasty, and then we all chose our own dessert.  It’s definitely a popular place, and luckily the steam train didn’t break down and we arrived 30 mins before the 5pm dinner seating.

Custer State Park is another place worth mentioning, and while we only drove through it, Bill did a 30 mile bike ride, and it almost seems to me like a mini Yellowstone.  It has lots of wildlife, popular campgrounds, and pretty upscale-looking lodges.

We joined the crowds at Mount Rushmore, which was touristy of course, but worth seeing in person.  The museum was neat but we had forgotten our masks so I was sort of antsy to get back outside.  This whole touristy Black Hills area was quite busy, with not a whole lot of social distancing happening, but a decent amount of people wearing masks (probably still less than 50%).

We drove across the entire state and stayed a few nights near Sioux Falls, at Big Sioux Recreation Area.  Another lovely campground, this one a state facility, with bike paths and playgrounds, and huge forested campsites.  We pretty much just hung out there, and I went off one day into town to take a nursing certification test at a Prometric Test Center.  This was an interesting pandemic experience, as the already strict environment of no water, no watch, no Google glasses inside the test room, just added in the whole Covid rigamarole. 

The stars in South Dakota were out of this world, largely due to the campground and the Badlands being more open/less forested landscapes. I tried for 3 nights to see the Comet Neowise, and finally saw it!  Then saw it several more nights as it got brighter and brighter.  I started doing yoga under the stars, which was great but lasted 4 nights like the rest of my ‘routines.’  Maybe it will be my South Dakota thing.

Anina’s Mount Rushmore sketch in her travel journal!

Hill City 1880 train.  They took the hour ride from Keystone to Hill City, and I drove the 15 miles.

Sleeping in the tent went well!

Whispers Abraham Lincoln, “Anina, my ears are not THAT big, and yes, Snoopy is my favorite patriotic dog!”  Rapid City, SD has a different president on each corner.

Our little Badlands climber

Anyone who has driven across South Dakota knows about this place.

As we rode on the train and strained up some hills, we could almost hear the train saying “I think I can, I think I can...”

Another birthday come and gone.  We had talked about going on the 1880 (steam engine) Train but we couldn’t decide if we wanted to get the truck to a shop or just wait and see if the check engine light comes back on.  So, at 8 a.m., we decided to go take the train.  I hurriedly bought our tickets and Steve took Aspen out.  The train leaves from Hill City, about 20 miles from here, and goes into Keystone.  Right now, they are only running 1 train a day and there’s only a 15 minute turn around time.  The ride was about 1 hour up and 1 hour back.  Monday was the first day of their season, so we had a lot of people out waving and taking pictures.  Later in the season, they’ll have 3 trains a day and you can choose to take a later train back enabling you to hang out in Keystone for a bit. We were hoping to do that, but it wasn’t an option.  We got our VIP passes last week so we took advantage of ½ price tickets.  Tickets are $32 for an adult so ½ off is a nice perk.  It was a beautiful day for a train ride.  We rode up in an enclosed car(windows could open) towards the back and rode back in an open car.  The open car was the 2nd car back from the engine so it was rather loud and at times, smelly.  I liked the open car but wish we’d been back a bit further.  I’d recommend the train ride though.  It’s a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.  

When we got back into Hill City, we were ready for lunch.  After checking out places nearby we chose a taco truck right across from the depot. They have a small building by the truck where you can sit inside and eat.  We both got the taco plate.  The rice wasn’t anything special, but the street tacos were delicious (especially the steak taco.)  

After that we took a much needed trip to Walmart in Rapid City.   Hill City is about ½ way to Rapid City so it worked our perfectly.  I had a 2 ½ page shopping list since we’d been truck less for so long.  I think I spent more on groceries Monday than I ever have.  But we are now stocked back up. Yay!  Then we headed back in time to drive thru Dairy Queen for some dinner.  It was a nice birthday and really great to get out after being stuck in the RV for so long.  AND the check engine light hasn’t come on…hopefully it won’t.

We find out something new about our RV every other day it seems.  Steve watched a video about ours and remembered it has a heat pump SO we could have been using electric heat (since we don’t pay for electric here) instead of propane!  Oh well, at least using it so much when we first got here helped him find our gas leak. Then he’s finally figured out the tank flush system.  Keystone didn’t do a very good job at labeling things nor did they write a very detailed users manual.  For the 2 months we’ve owned it, he wondered if it had a system to flush out both of our tanks (we have 2 since we have 2 bathrooms), it would make sense, but nothing mentioned a second flushing system.  He even called Keystone and they said to take some pictures and they’d try to figure it out. Geez!  Today he finally had time to play around with it and found an unlabeled connection that has turned out to be that second system.  Two years from now we’ll still be figuring stuff out on this RV!  

Our friend Dennis arrived yesterday.  He was glad to get away from the Arizona heat.  He starts work next Monday.  He had a rough start…they told him what site to park in and he got all set up and then they told him he had to move because someone had that site rented for the night. Poor guy had to move to another site. Since he came a month earlier than originally planned, his site won’t be completely free until July 1, so he has to move like 3 times this month. That’s not much fun!