French Creek Horse Camp - Custer, South Dakota

 

French Creek Horse Camp is located inside the Custer State Park. It is a super popular camp among equestrians.

Horses get a decent sized corral with no cover.

The horse on the far right is a mare belonging to another camper. Lennox did not like her. He was baring his teeth at her and threatening to bite her, so she was staying in the far corner of her corral as far away from him as she could get.

Someone comes by every day or so to collect the manure to keep the flies down.

The campsites are good sized with plenty of room for large LQs. Each site has a picnic table and a fire ring.

No wifi and cell service is sketchy.

Campsites have electric hook-up, but no water or sewer.

There is an RV dump next to the shower house.

For water you fill up your tanks or jugs at a faucet next to the shower house. This is for water for the LQ.

For water for the horses, you are supposed to pump the water from the creek.

We have a large tank we use for spare water, so we used that to bring water to our trailer and the horses.

Sunset over the Black Hills

There is a lodge about an hour ride from the campground called Blue Bell Lodge. 

So, we did a Ride and Eat to the lodge.

The lodge is really nice. Great wifi. The food is mostly buffalo items. I ate the buffalo chili and Ari had the buffalo stew. The food is really good and the staff is quite kind.

We set up a high line for the horses and tied them up to the high line while we ate. The horses got to graze on the high grass while we enjoyed a nice lunch.

The camper with the mare makes her own hellhats. A hellhat is a combined helmet and cowboy hat brim. She showed me some of her work and she is quite talented. I bought one of her hats.

Check out the gem work.

The trails out of the camp are quite beautiful. Lots of water crossings.

Without internet service, we would drive into Custer so we could catch up on email and play on the internet. We usually would camp out at the Mount Rushmore Brewery.

The servers became familiar with us and one server made Ari this really nice Sangria.