Broken Arrow Horse Camp - Custer, South Dakota

 

Well, we are finally in the Black Hills of South Dakota and I am super happy we are here. We will be circling around Custer for the next month checking out the different campgrounds.

It has been super hot - mid to high 80's and we have been riding mostly in the early mornings when we can.

The folks at Broken Arrow are as nice as can be. Very welcoming. 

They even have a pastor who lives in the campground and leads Sunday morning prayer services. 

We were invited to attend while we were checking in. I explained that we are Jewish and we attend services with our congregation at home on-line. I am pretty sure we are the only Jews he has ever met.

The horses are in decent sized stalls with cover. This is nice because of the heat and we have been experiencing thunderstorms on and off in the evenings.

We had a terrible thunderstorm Tuesday evening. It was quite the light show. South Dakota does not mess around when it comes to thunderstorms. Another thunderstorm Thursday night.

The campground does not allow you to tack up your horses at your campsite, but they provide FREE! golf carts so you can haul your tack to the barns and tack up there. This is a real awesome amenity. We feel quite spoiled - especially when we have been driving our truck to the barn with our tack.

There are hitching posts next to the barn. I didn't appreciate this so much until we had to tie up the horses to the fence posts when we were at Fort Robinson.

Only about half the people staying at this campground have horses, so I do appreciate that they have this sign posted. While I don't really mind people petting our horses, I don't want anybody feeding my horses anything without my knowledge. Horses have sensitive tummies and they get stomach aches easily.

Campsites are full hook-up and pull-through. Each campsite has a picnic table and fire ring. They also have free WIFI. The WIFI is awesome. We have been able to stream shows and Ari can even play his on-line video game.

You leave any garbage out in the morning at the end of your camping pad and staff comes by and picks it up.

There is also a laundry area and showers.

You can see the Black Hills in the distance.

Our first ride was on the BE trail. It was very pretty, not too difficult, mostly through pastures. 

We went into Custer to see the sights. They have buffalo statues at the ends of every street.

I love when towns do this with different painted animals. Los Gatos has their cats. Chicago has bulls. Norfolk has mermaids. Suffolk has beehives. 

Our second trail ride was to Beecher's Rock. This was a really nice ride and I highly recommend it.

It's a little more interesting than the BE trail. The rock formations are fabulous and the views from the top of the ridge are awesome.

Ari loves a view.

On Thursday we decided to take the day off riding (temps were in the high 80s. Instead, we decided to tour Wind Cave National Park. The Lakota Indians have a creation story tied to the cave. The story goes that the Great Spirit created the earth, but before the earth was created, the Lakota tribe lived inside this cave. Once the earth was ready for human occupation, the Lakota tribe came up to the surface to live. 

This is the opening in the cave where the Lakota tribe emerged from. Supposedly after the tribe had exited the cave, the opening was shrunk down so nobody could get in or out.

We did the moderate cave tour which runs a little over an hour. We got to the park around 10:30 am as the first tour starts around 10:40. To our surprise, the place was packed. Apparently people started lining up for the cave tours before they even opened. We ended up getting tickets for the 1:40 pm tour. Our campground is only 20 minutes from the park, so we drove back to our campsite and had lunch and then came back for the tour. 

The cave tour was not a lot of talking from the ranger - basically you just walked through. It is a dry cave, but cool (we were looking forward to being out of the heat). There are none of the more common cave formations - like columns, stalagmites, etc. But the cave was quite impressive and the tour was definitely worth it.

There are buffalo and elk in the park. You can horse back ride in the park, but you need to get a free permit from the ranger at the visitor center. The park is adjacent to Custer State Park and Centennial Trail runs through both parks. We got a permit since we will be camping at Custer State Park at the end of the month and I would like to ride Centennial Trail.

Shep's Canyon Horse Camp - Hot Springs, South Dakota

 

The horses each get their own large pipe corral - with grass!

There is one faucet in the entire campground - located next to the vault toilet. This is non-potable water and it has negative water pressure, by which I mean the water comes out so slowly it appears to move backwards.

We are right next to the Angostura Reservoir. We have a small private beach next to the campground with a picnic table.

You can see the picnic table waving at us through the trees.

The temperatures have been in the mid-90s. It is HOT! We spent a good hour sitting in the water and it was lovely.

The campsite pads are well maintained and each site has a picnic table and fire ring.

We are the only equestrians at the campground. Other sites filled up with teens and families using small campers and tents.

The horses are quite happy in their corrals.

It was too hot to ride, so we spent a day in Hot Springs, which is about 30 minutes away.

Our first stop was the Mammoth Site. This is an on-going paleontological dig. This is a real place where paleontologists and students work recovering the bones from Mammoths and other pre-historic animals.

Over 60 Mammoths are in-situ at this dig site. 

Children and adults can pay a small fee (about 12 dollars) and get an hour working in the dig under supervision. 

This is the first real paleontological dig I have seen. I have seen simulations in museums, but this was pretty mind-blowing.

Our next stop was Evans Plunge. This is a large mineral spring pool that is inside. A day pass is $14 and you have in and out privileges (you get one of those wristbands popular at most amusement parks). You have access to a steam room, sauna, hot tubs, and an enormous pool that has two large water slides.

It was too hot to use the sauna or steam room, but we enjoyed the pool a great deal.

Most of the restaurants in Hot Springs had shut down - victims of the pandemic, I expect. A local recommended we eat at the bowling alley - apparently that's the best place to eat in town.

Ari ordered a BBQ chicken sandwich and I had the chili fries. It wasn't the worst food we have ever eaten and with the understanding that this was the BEST food in town...

On Sunday, the temperatures finally came down to the high 70's, so we could ride.

We rode around the reservoir and through this cowboy gate to explore the foothills.

It was a wonderful ride. Getting our first taste of the Black Hills of South Dakota. I have really been looking forward to exploring the Dakotas and so far I have not been disappointed.

Fort Robinson State Park - Crawford, Nebraska

 Starting in Wyoming, we would meet equestrians who told us that we must stop at Fort Robinson - that this campground was the best in the country for horses.  

Fort Robinson started as a US Cavalry station. It has a great deal of history. There are several buildings that are original to the fort, but most of the buildings are from the 1930s and later.

This was also a POW camp during WWII for German prisoners.

We started by putting the horses in the Mare Barn.

The stalls are teeny tiny 10 ft by 10 ft stalls. Very dark and the openings for the horses were so higher they had to stretch their necks to look out. The horses were not happy. One of the horses was screaming - he was so upset about his accommodations.

My great uncle, Samuel Gardener (nee Goldman), came to the United States when he was 8 around 1887. He lived in New York with his brothers, ran away from them when he was 12, and then enlisted in the US Cavalry when he was 16. He served during the 1918 War. He was a private, could barely read and write English. He fed the horses, mucked the stalls, and groomed the horses. Only officers were allowed to the ride the horses. The rest of the soldiers were infantrymen or working jobs on base like my uncle. My uncle said the Cavalry saved his life. The older soldiers taught him how to read and write, provided lessons in mathematics and history. After he was discharged, he was able to attend college and graduate as an engineer.

He worked in Company G. He told me all the horses in Company G had names that started with the letter G. He hated the horses. He said they were mean and would try to bite him any chance they got. This is why the stalls are constructed this way - to prevent the horses from biting the soldiers as they walked by. Also, horses weren't considered sentient beings back then. They were tools with no more feelings than a gun.

We looked for a better space for the horses and ended up putting them in this large pen behind the arena. The horses loved this pen. It had grass, was open, and they could move around.

Unfortunately, a ranger told us we were not allowed to leave our horses here and we needed to move them.

So, we moved the horses to the Brick Barn - this is one of the newer barns. The stalls are still 10 ft by 10 ft, but they are open so the horses can see each other and they have light. 

Tacking the horses up next to the brick barn. There are no hitching posts! So, we ended up tying them to the fence. Normally, this is not a good idea.

The trails here are extensive. No way we can do them all, but we got a pretty good sense of the land.

Lots of equestrians bragged about riding the buttes, so we did go up and ride the top of the buttes. The views were amazing.

We also rode along the White River. I had hoped riding by the river would be shady and cool, but it was hot and very little cover.

It is almost 90 degrees every day here and it is early June. Other people are reporting rattle snake sightings. I can't imagine how hot it must be and the insects when it is August. One person told us she took 20 ticks off her horse.

The equestrian campground is really nice - although it is far from the Brick Barns. We have to load our tack into our truck and drive there. We have water and electric hook-up. Four of the campsites are full hook-up, but they were  reserved.  There is an RV dump at another campground, so we stopped there going in and will stop there again when we leave.

Ari has cell service. I do not.

There is a laundry room with one washer and one dryer, so we are waiting to do our laundry.

There is an indoor pool, but it appears to be a major magnet for kids, so we are passing. It is closed two days of the week as well.

There is a cafeteria serving fast food at amusement park prices.

There are two small museums on site as well.

There is a small grocery in town about three miles away and larger stores in Chadron, about thirty miles away.

We had three excellent trail rides here and while I don't think this is the Best Equestrian Campground in the entire country. It definitely is a very nice one.