Last post about this, I promise! I just would've never visited South Dakota had my friends not invited me along on this random lil trip, so I want to share what I've learned with you. You can fly into Rapid City and visit the otherworldly national park Badlands, the Black Hills, colossal monuments like Mount Rushmore + the Crazy Horse Memorial, huge mountains + thousands of bison in Custer State Park, tiny casinos in the old cowboy town of Deadwood, and you can even cross over into Wyoming to see Devil's Tower. None of these places are more than an hour-ish drive from each other! And you'll see a lot of variety in terrain along the way. We visited during the April shoulder season and basically had it all to ourselves. The days before and after our trip were a nice 65-70 degrees & sunny, but as soon as we arrived temps dipped into the low 40s...oh well, it's better than the summer when it all gets crazy hot & crowded. Hotels are cheap & pretty nice. Go somewhere else if you're a food motivated traveler, you'll be mostly eating burgers cooked by the bartender. Anyways, highly recommend visiting this special place.
I'll be sharing some film shots from the trip on this IG account.
i put a moratorium on international travel for myself last year and it has frankly made me a patriot u can see the badlands of South Dakota, the oldest exposed rock in the world (1.8 billion y.o) at the Grand Canyon, ancient pueblos in New Mexico, the pristine boundary waters of Minnesota —all accessible without a passport—what a privilege, what a gift “O beautiful for spacious skies / for amber waves of grain / for purple mountain majesties / above the fruited plain” they were not kidding
