Hiking at Custer State Park: Cathedral Spires, Needles Highway, Sunday Gulch, & Black Elk Peak!

this week we're exploring south dakota with south dakota tourism to show you all the best hikes things to do places to see and delicious food to eat all across this beautiful and diverse state for the last couple days we have been exploring the beautiful spearfish canyon and its waterfalls wandered around historic deadwood ate some amazing burgers saw tons of bison visited mount rushmore and crazy horse and checked off our 27th national park and for our third day in south dakota we're going to explore the beautiful custer state park custer state park is probably one of the things we've been most excited about while here in south dakota it's south dakota's oldest and largest state park at 71 000 acres has a bunch of really cool and unique scenery and it's home to the highest point in the u.s east of the rockies we have a handful of hikes we want to explore today as well as a very interesting drive in the van and we're kicking off with a sunrise hike to cathedral spires [Music] so this hike is about 2.3 miles and it's marked as strenuous because i believe there's some rock climbing involved nothing too crazy but i think just enough so that they can't really call it easy but the best part about this hike is we're already kind of seeing it now but we're going to end up by these things called the cathedral spires which basically these just pillar rock formations that you see a lot in this area but this specific part of the park seems to have the most of them and from what we can see so far it is crazy cool [Music] [Applause] [Music] these spires are freaking wild we're just in a valley surrounded by them they're just so pointy and jagged and rugged this is really unlike anything i think we've ever seen [Applause] [Applause] we made it to the end of the trail this is the end of the trail sign this place is absolutely incredible like catherine said i don't think we've ever seen anything like this they're just they're just beautiful and just so unique but i think you can climb up in these kind of there's probably little pathways but i think we're going to pass on that but we're just going to enjoy the views here it's awesome sunrise absolutely perfect morning the trail kind of just ends in this big open gravelly circle thing with a bunch of the spires around you but the best view of the spires is just a few steps down the trail back towards the trailhead where you're in this valley just surrounded by them [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] one of the main roads that runs through the park is the needles highway it's called the needles highway because of the rock-like formations that look like needles and they look like they're piercing the horizon they say supposed to be beautiful scenery as we've already seen so far there's tons of twists and turns but the interesting part is there's a couple tunnels you have to go through and they have really close really low clearance and we have a high top van so that's extra interesting for us i'm a little nervous about it and to get to our next hike we have to go to one of the go through one of the most famous ones the needle's eye tunnel oh yeah there it is oh that looks really small yeah i should also note that when we entered the park yesterday to do the wildlife loop the lady at the hut that we paid for our fee she said i don't think your van is going to make it through some of these tunnels so you might just want to stick to the wildlife lube pretty nervous about this it's like a hundred feet long i've done a ton of research on this measuring the heights i've measured the van like three times i'm pretty sure i'm good on width but height is what i'm nervous about it's nine feet eight inches nine feet nine inches and the van is 107 inches so there should be three or four inches to spare oh man i'm putting on a good face for adam but i'm definitely very nervous about this [Music] this is crazy is kind of fun this is tight kona is really nervous about it too if you can't hear her but yeah all the research i did i looked on google photos i looked on rv forums all this everybody said do not bring rbs i know we're not an rv but that's just you know you're always nervous but i did see another guy on instagram brought his sprinter through so that made me feel good and then also on google photos i saw one of those reserve america rvs get through here and those are definitely bigger than this but the kicker is i also saw i think tour buses come through here and that's what really made me feel comfortable about it but still pretty nerve wracking we made it everything looks good no damage the mirror's still there the wii boost is still there honestly i feel like there were definitely more inches to spare than we thought would you agree so it wasn't as tight but i mean still if you're if you have bad depth perception you may not do a good job going through the tunnels but yeah there's a bunch of tunnels on this road we might go through more later we'll see what's on our route but this was definitely the one we were most nervous about because it's more kind of like curved in but good job adam apparently i read on the forums that the big hubbub that people have is people go through the tunnel you know all nervous like i was and then they just zoom right past it and forget to even look at the thing that the tunnel is named after it's not called the needle's eye because it's so small it's because of this formation right here looks like a needle's eye that was so much fun we're gonna go through it again two more times [Music] just as awesome the second time we're going through for our third time now so we can actually get to the next hike this is my first time actually being in the van i could easily just touch the walls if i stuck my hands out the window it's definitely not as scary as we thought it would be but it's still it's still something that you don't get to do every day next up we're hiking the sunday gulch trail which is a three mile loop trail and it's rated strenuous but i think that's just because there's some interesting features at the beginning of the trail the trail starts here at sylvan lake which is an absolutely beautiful lake it's got these big rocks jutting out of the water there's a hill behind with trees and in the morning light it is just beautiful with the reflections [Music] i think so in glacier our word of the vlog every vlog was epic epic i feel like the word of all these south dakota vlogs will be crazy crazy and beautiful yeah the lake is nice and glassy right now and the reflections there's just huge humps and rocks like we like we keep saying south dakota has just been full of surprises so far seriously this is really crazy we don't know what to say it's so hard to describe things sometimes so we use a lot of the same words so i think we started the trail the wrong direction it's a loop trail and we're seeing most people going clockwise we're going counterclockwise and i think you want to go clockwise to get all the cool features at the beginning so we're going to reroute [Music] i think we found the start of the trail and it's starting out a little narrow oh my god yeah i know i was gonna say whoa there are huge boulders just standing resting up there that is a little terrifying [Music] [Music] it's so gorgeous here can't get over it so everywhere i read said that the crazy part was at the beginning and it involves like there's a rail to help you climb up and stuff at least from what i remember i feel like we're a good amount in we haven't seen it so maybe we were going the right way earlier i don't know we'll figure it out eventually [Applause] [Music] i think we're finally hitting the part of the hike that i thought we'd hit at the beginning which is the more interesting part of the hike the terrain has gone from kind of just forest and meadowy to i guess in between all the rocks it makes i don't know if gulch is the right word but that's the name of the hike so i'm gonna assume it's a gulch but it's kind of canyony there's like a little bit of a river going through there's a staircase i think it's about to get really fun [Music] pretty tough sledding going back this way though a lot of uphill and climbing up these boulders but it's fun it's super fun [Applause] [Music] so [Music] we finished the sunday gulch trail and from my re reading of reviews i think a lot of people start with the gulch part and then end the way we started you actually i think end up in the same spot or maybe you end up on the other side of the lake we're still confused about that but anyway still a little cloudy for us but you can obviously do it any way you want but i would say we would prefer to do it the way we do we went clockwise and you have awesome views at the beginning then it gets a little woody and you kind of get down in the gulch or like a like foresty area yeah and then you come up to the gulch and you climb up it it was fun it was fun it's like a little adventure at the end instead of having it right off at the beginning yeah you had views at the beginning and then fun adventure at the end which kind of kept you going towards the end so either way you do it it'll be great but that's just the way we did it and i think it was i think it worked out pretty well it was awesome it was really fun we have one more hike we want to do at custer state park but we're going to save it for sunset so in the meantime we're going to head to our new campground called bismarck lake campground we've been staying at grizzly creek primitive but they didn't have any spots for tonight so we have to move to a different spot but it looks really cool and i think we might actually have a lakefront camp spot so we're gonna head there now and we're gonna make a fun little campfire liner which will hopefully go better than our pizza last time [Music] we made it to our campsite and it's technically lake from but it's a bit of a trek down there but we have an awesome lake view and the site is amazing we have the parking area up there and then the kind of a separate area with the fire pit with the picnic table we only have one person across from us and we have all the space around us to ourselves it's a very spacious spot so if you come to the black hills come to bismarck lake campground site number four it's time for us to make our liner [Music] for today's campfire liner because we're eating between lunch and dinner we're gonna try something a little bit simpler than that one time at glacier when we thought we could make a campfire pizza but then it turned out to be a bagel bite it was still really good if you haven't watched that vlog go check it out but yeah didn't really go exactly how we planned so we asked on instagram if you guys had any good campfire recipes and quite a few people recommended doing these foil packets where basically you get a piece of foil you put all the ingredients you want in it wrap it up throw it on the fire and then you open it and you eat it so for our foil packet we're gonna do a cheesy bacon ranch potato chicken [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah and now for the best best part yeah buddy and now for the best best best part oh got all melty this looks so good yeah that is so good the ranch gives it so much flavor the potatoes are cooked perfectly the cheese is melted the bacon's awesome the chicken's nice and soft everything's cooked nice and well the asparagus makes it healthy um but yeah this is excellent we're gonna have to add this to our staple especially when we do campfires this is awesome this cheese is so melted that is delicious so good we we're gonna have to make this all the time it's kind of healthy hearty cheesy buttery you cannot go wrong it's so good and the best part is the cleanup is as easy as this [Music] and for dessert we are doing a hobo pie which was another suggestion from you guys so thank you but you might be asking what a hobo pie is so using this what's called a pie iron you take a piece of bread you put your fillings in there with it put another piece of bread clamp it down stick it in the fire let it go get all gooey you can do like pizzas you can do sweet stuff you can do probably the options are probably endless we're doing a sweet thing we are gonna take some bread and we're gonna put in like kind of like a twist on uh an elvis sandwich it's like peanut butter banana some marshmallow it's like a elvis mixed with like a s'more to avoid the great bagel bite debacle of 2020 we're gonna slather some butter on there so that it's uh so we don't have that huge sticking problem so hopefully this will work out [Music] so it's supposed to shut in there this thing like unscrews it's supposed to shut in there nice and close and tight i'm not sure how this is gonna work [Music] victory see how it turns out [Music] oh i can smell it actually you can hear it oh oh yeah this is gonna be awesome oh no oh my god after seeing adam cut that i think i might need a bib oh my god that is amazing it's so good it's so gooey on the inside which is why it's all over my face now but the bread has a nice little crunch to it kind of like a graham cracker oh my gosh that is revolutionary this will create world peace now that we're all stuck from our foil packets and our hobo pie let's go do a sunset hike it may be the worst idea ever [Music] for sunset we are hiking to black elk peak which at 7 24 feet is not only the highest point in south dakota but also the highest point east of the rockies in the united states it's a 7.6 mile hike and you gain about 1 550 feet of elevation we've been told the best way to go is go up trail nine and down trail number four so that's what we're gonna do it looks like we were two feet off but it said on lines 44 but whatever what can you do but this trail and this peak used to be called harney peak trail horny peak but they recently renamed it after the oglala lakota i think it was a medicine man is what i've heard him referred to as black elk [Music] so we've reached a junction we're not totally sure how much farther we have to go we have yet to actually see the peak we're in the forest the whole time for most of the time with some views but it's always nice when you can see the end point and know kind of how much farther you have just by looking at it so we haven't had that so it'll be a surprise but i think we're getting closer this trail number four right here that's the way we're going to go down from what i've heard it kind of takes you through the cathedral spires we went through this morning so it'll be dark by the time we get there probably but hopefully be light enough where you can see the spires at night because that would be really pretty [Music] 99 sure that's the back side of mount rushmore the rectangular looking one [Music] we found it finally as our first look at it wow oh you can go in that tower did you know about all this no every hike in this park has just had something really unique about it yeah just to make it a little bit different or a lot different than any other hike we've ever done loving it [Music] highest point in south dakota we have it all to ourselves oh my gosh it's a saturday in the summer and i'm shocked i mean people might join we may not have it all to ourselves for long still early you still have another 45 minutes till the sunset but we're going to soak it up while we have it but even the sunrise hike we only saw two other groups two or three other groups three people total yeah absolutely crazy so not only is it the highest peak east of the rocky mountains but it's also the highest peak west of the pyrenees mountains in europe that's pretty crazy [Music] i can't believe they let you go in this [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] this is awesome you usually can't go in stuff like this [Music] the sun has officially kind of set behind some wildfire smoke it's still up but you can't see it anymore it's kind of crazy just behind a wall of smoke so we're gonna start heading down and no one ever showed up we were the only ones we had this whole place to ourselves we were expecting it to be really busy so this was such a pleasant surprise i know we say this all the time but that was one of the coolest sites we've been on yeah just the uniqueness of this tower and like these cool staircases we're going yeah now it's like built up is i didn't know about is super cool just all the views so yeah we're gonna we're gonna book it down back to the car to hopefully not be hiking too much in the pitch black [Music] the ground is so cool stuck to the crushed up rock i guess you can see the sparkles and it's like stars in the ground we survived the hike took us about three hours and 40 minutes and that was worth 40 minutes sitting up at the top hanging out waiting for the sun to set as we said at the beginning of the vlog custer state park is one of the things we are most excited about during this trip and it did not disappoint if you're coming to south dakota you only have time for a couple things make sure this is on your list but it has been a long day we did three hikes sunrise one right after sunrise and then sunset we did probably like 12 13 miles and i'm just telling you right now we are stinky so uh next on the list is uh on the itinerary is take a shower so we're gonna take a shower hit the hay and then we'll be coming back at you tomorrow with a city [Music] adventure you

Channel: Adventures of A+K

Views: 82,565

Rating: 4.9492211 out of 5

Keywords: south dakota, south dakota travel, south dakota travel vlog, things to do in south dakota, what to do in south dakota, things to do in south dakota usa, what to do in south dakota usa, black hills south dakota, things to do in the black hills, what to do in the black hills, south dakota road trip, Custer State Park, custer state park south dakota, Hiking black elk peak, Needles highway, cathedral spires, sunday gulch, Black Elk Peak, What to do at Custer State Park

Id: tSnh40BRYs8

Length: 26min 53sec (1613 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020