Badlands / White River KOA Holiday

We stayed at Badlands / White River KOA Holiday in Interior, South Dakota. (Campground Reviews listing.)

Yet another KOA, quite nice, right outside Badlands National Park.

Dates:

Check in: 2023-09-03
Check out: 2023-09-17
14 nights

Weather:

Everything from sunny to thunderstorms
High temps ranging between 67-99°F, lows around 50-67°F
Afternoon gusts up to 33 MPH

Noise:

Occasional road noise, not annoying
No train noise
Negligible neighbor noise

Site:

#20, pull-through, gravel
Needed to disconnect toad; parked behind coach
Fairly level
Gravel driveway about 60 feet long by about 8 feet wide
Patio and grass on passenger side about 42 feet wide
Grass between driver side and next site about 20 feet wide
Some big trees
Table, chairs, charcoal grill, and weird fire pit on concrete patio
Clean site

Utilities:

50 amp power, conveniently located
55 PSI water, conveniently located
Good sewer connection, conveniently located (1 10-foot pipe needed)

Internet (in usage priority order):

Starlink: 78-133 Mbps down, 10-14 Mbps up, 78-138 ms ping
Campground Wi-Fi: 36-42 Mbps down, 21-32 ms up, 56 ms ping
AT&T: negligible service
Verizon: 13-23 Mbps down, 8-11 Mbps up, 35 ms ping
T-Mobile: 2 Mbps down, 0.06 Mbps up, 70 ms ping

Amenities:

Pool
Garbage pickup from site
Package delivery to office
Cook shack food

Our review on Campground Reviews:

Cook Shack and close to Badlands NP

What’s not to love about a park that has food service onsite? I definitely appreciate it, especially when other options are few and far between. We had a deluxe patio site, which was located at the end of a row. The site had a few trees for afternoon shade, which was nice. The site was not huge, however, and we had to park our tow vehicle perpendicular to the coach; I still worried about our bumper getting clipped as the roads are pretty narrow and there are some tight turns. It was pretty quiet, and the proximity to Badlands NP can’t be beat. We camped at Badlands / White River KOA Holiday in a Motorhome.

Tip for Other Campers: Stock up on bottled water before arriving. The local water is very alkaline and hard, which made it pretty much undrinkable (unless you like that sort of thing; our three-stage filter and water softener still didn’t improve it). The mosquitos are voracious, so ensure you have repellant if you want to sit outside. Plan ahead and get tickets for the control room tour at Minuteman Missile NHS. You get a pretty personalized tour and a good feel for what it was like to serve there.

The campground map:

Map

We stayed in site #20, which we had site-locked as what looked like the best site when we booked. Once here, and after walking around the campground, I can confirm; it is definitely the best site. There are some very long sites towards the back of the campground, but they are buddy sites (i.e. living areas facing the neighbor), which we hate.

An interactive map:

Our site, on the end of the row:

Our site

Using the Starlink on the flagpole:

Our site

Our patio:

Our patio

The patio came with a wacky fire pit thingy, and a charcoal grill, though we didn’t use either, but did use our Blackstone griddle:

Our patio

The RV park is near Badlands National Park, so we were able to add that sticker to our coach, starting another row (I’ll need a stepstool to add them soon!):

National Park stickers on our coach

Sunset:

Sunset

We normally drink water from the dispenser on our fridge. But not here — even the five filters the water passes through weren’t able to make the water here taste good; our test strips indicate that the water has very high pH and alkalinity, which the filters can’t help with:

Water test strip