Badlands National Park South Dakota

Sleepy Hollow Campground and RV Park

Wall, SD (16-23 Jul)

Our stay in Wall, SD can be summarized by two primary activities – 1) visiting Wall Drug; 2) driving through the Badlands National Park.  For Wall, SD (population 699) there is not much else to do.  A perfect stopover to see the Badlands, we stayed at the appropriately named “Sleepy Hollow Campground and RV Park.”  A no frills camping experience, but more than adequate full-service camp with room for big rigs.  Even on the edge of town, it was still only about a 5-minute walk to the remarkable Wall Drug and the rest of the one Main Street!  

Wall Drug is an entity of its own and has a very interesting history starting as a “free ice water” stop in 1931.  More info included in the link and it is worth a read.  If you need / want food, clothing or a souvenir from the area, you WILL find it at Wall Drug!  We were sure to enjoy the homemade ice cream and what a treat!  Real cream is used in the making of this popular dessert, and it was available at the Soda Fountain!  Also on the grounds was a Hall of Photos that represented Wall through the ages going back to the frontier days.  Frontier history buffs would spend hours here!  It was really a great small town with a couple of other restaurants, a couple of gas stations, and a requisite Harley-Davidson store! 

We also visited the Badlands National Park and witnessed some of the most spectacular landscape in the country!  Along the approximately 35-mile drive you are witness to undulating prairies right next to some incredible cliffs and valleys of a variety of colors and shapes!  Truly an amazing site to see and one we are grateful for having experienced.  It is high on the list for a re-visit! 

We did make one other side trip the “Minuteman Missile National Historic Site” along the trip to the Badlands.  Conveniently located at the start or end of the Badlands, depending on which way you drive the route, (we did it once each way!) the Center was another great snapshot in history about the Cold War.  The visitors’ center is worth the stop and according to literature you could also set up a tour of the missile launch facility near the center.  We did not do that but did drive by the launch facility and former site of the Minuteman missile silos. 

During our stay we also rode jackalopes and broncos, saw an 80-foot dinosaur, fed prairie dogs, and had a sighting of Bigfoot!  We met some great Park Rangers and saw a variety of local wildlife to cap off a great stop on our American tour.  The last noteworthy mention is that this is where we wondered about our decision to go north for the summer with multiple days in the triple digits topping out at 108 F!  Ugh!!