Elk Mountain Campground — Hotel in Hot Springs

Elk Mountain Campground, Wind Cave National Park. Hot Springs, South Dakota. We camped in this National Park campground on June 23 in our conversion van. There are a total of 75 sites, all of which are primitive and first come first served. I called the park prior to our visit and was told that the campground rarely fills up. There is a variety of different sites in this campground...back-in, pull through, some shaded , some with no shade. Most appear to be level. Sites have a picnic table and fire ring. Some sites are closer together than others. The bathroom has flush toilets and sinks, but no showers. There are water hydrants located throughout the campground. Firewood is available at the entrance to the campground. They have enveloped for donations for the firewood. Cost is $18.00 per night. Half price is you have a senior access pass. The campground and bathrooms were very clean. It was a very quiet campground. they do have evening ranger programs in summer, but they did not start until the day after we were there. Location was perfect for us since we wanted to tour Wind Cave. We arrived at the visitor center at about 5:15pm and were able to get tickets for the 5:30 cave tour. (We were at Jewel Cave earlier in the day and the cave tours were sold out, except for the Discovery Tour which is only 30 minutes and only goes into the first room of the cave.) Other attractions in Hot Springs include the Mammoth Site. Custer State Park is just to the north. There are several hiking trails in the park and we saw pronghorn and buffalo as we drove north out of the park. Other attractions withing 50 miles include Jewel Cave, Mt. Rushmore, and Crazy Horse Memorial. We would stay here again if...

We booked a weekend stay camping trip at this location (Elk Mountain Campground) and were originally in D Loop. However by random luck after booking we saw that D loop had no working facilities due to maintenance. Something we would have never seen if I hadn't had checked the website one more time before leaving. We moved our location instead to B loop. We stayed at site 28B. This shouldn't even be considered a campsite due to the extreme hill you are on. There is absolutely NO flat ground to set up a tent on 28B. The incline is so extreme, our sleeping bags kept sliding to the door of the tent. Even the picnic table leans so far it's difficult to set anything on it without sliding off. We planned to stay all weekend but left after only one night. The headaches we got from such an extreme slope was horrendous for sleeping. And obviously we put our heads uphill, anything else would be completely out of the question. Lights from the toilet facilities shine all night long straight into your tent. Was told from the camp attendee he'd come see us and tell us bit about the site and its offerings, besides the occasional wave as they drove by we never saw them again. I was given three different stories about firewood, One said it was free, another said it was NOT free and cost roughly $7 a bundle, and a posted notice of campsite rules on the toilets said it was available but donations were accepted. Still never found out where to actually get firewood so I brought my own.

Will never get a campsite at this campground again. Stay away from Site 28B if you're...

Tent camper review -

Pros- Beautiful setting in the trees in a lovely National Park close to the visitor center. Toilets are clean, drinking water available close to each site and an area to wash dishes. Hearing the Bison close to the campground is awesome. Amphitheatre with evening programme is great.

Cons - If you are tent camping most sites marked as 'tent' sites have no tent pad and very un level ground making it unsuitable for a tent. Putting in a tent pad in each site would not be alot of work but would make this a much more desirable place to camp. Our first stay was at site 14 in the tent only loop, this was a fantastic spot. Images of the sites on the rec.gov website are poor quality so don't help with choosing a site. if you do t manage to find a spot in the tent only loop then you might end up next to a noisy RV like we did in site 45. A huge RV turned up shortly after we set up and had their engine running all day making our site noisy and smelling of fumes. We packed up and left two days early because of this inconsiderate camper. Mobile data is mostly non existent in most of the campsite and WiFi is only close to...