South Dakota's Black Hills have a few attractions that are older than the hills. Commune with ancient mammoths or past presidents. Pan for gold like a true tourist--and find some. Explore a gold mine deep underground. Risk your life on a sheer ice wall. Bike along a 100-mile trail through pristine and primeval forests. The Black Hills and the Badlands have enough healthy and adventurous activities to fill several vacations.
Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore National Memorial, 23 miles southwest of Rapid City, has granite-faced presidential heads as tall as six-story buildings. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt look out over the Black Hills and seem almost alive in the morning and afternoon light.
The memorial is open every day except Christmas and is free. Parking costs $10 as of 2010. You can't climb Mount Rushmore, but you can scale a few neighboring hills. There are hiking trails and self-guided audio tours that can be purchased on site for $5, and an evening light show illuminates the monument.
The spectacular Fourth of July fireworks display for 2010 has been canceled because of extremely hazardous fire conditions caused by the decimation of the surrounding forest by pine beetles.
Gold Mines
The Big Thunder Mine was registered in 1893, blasted out of solid rock, and is still a safe, open mine although it never made anybody rich. Nearby mother lodes kept the mine's original owners dreaming and working at it, but they didn't hit the wide veins of neighboring mines.
The tour takes you through the mine and follows up with a gold-panning experience that will send you home with a nice, shiny souvenir. Visit the mining museum on the Big Thunder property for Gold Rush artifacts and a replica of a working gold mill. The tour costs $8.99 for adults and $5.99 for children ages 6 to 12, and gold panning costs $8.25 per pan or $6.25 with the mine tour as of June 2010. The museum is free.
Mammoth Site of Hot Springs
Woolly mammoths, camels, giant bears and other prehistoric mammals became trapped in a sinkhole 26,000 years ago and left their bones for modern paleontologists to find and decipher.
The site in Hot Springs, in the southern Black Hills, has yielded more than 58 mammoths and 80 other Ice Age species and is a working dig, housed in a research facility that is open to visitors year-round.
Take a 30-minute guided tour and see a 10-minute video. Meet a full-size mammoth replica up close. Watch paleontologists excavate fossils in the summer and let the kids dig with real tools for life-size fossil replicas.
The tours costs $6 for ages 5 to 12, $8 for ages 13 to 59 and $7.50 for 60 and over as of June 2010.
Ice Climbing
Winter is no reason to forsake the Black Hills. In fact, every kind of winter sport is available in abundance, including a few that are location-specific. Fair-weather rock climbers turn to ice climbing in the winter when waterfalls and rock spires are encrusted in sheets of ice and snow.
A few sites recommended by the intrepid are Eleventh Hour Gulch with a frozen waterfall and colorful rock walls in Spearfish Canyon, Bridal Falls with two ice falls on either side of the falls, Crow, which is sometimes slushy and Community Caves with freestanding giant icicles.
The toughest climb is the Harney Ice Flow on the back side of Harney Peak. The Black Hills Climbers do trail repairs and have information on conditions on their website.
Biking George S. Mickelson Trail
Bike a 109-mile, packed gravel, easy-to-moderate trail through the Black Hills where you'll roll through four tunnels, 100 converted railroad bridges and pristine National Forest Land.
The spruce and Ponderosa pine forest of the George S. Mickelson Trail attracts horseback riders and hikers as well as cyclists and people of all ages and abilities who can manage the rides.
More than a dozen trailheads provide parking, toilets, picnic tables and self-service trail pass purchase. Th cost of a pass is $3 per day or annual fee of $15 as of June 2010. Cellphone coverage is poor to nonexistent along most of the trail.
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