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:
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:
Using the Starlink on the flagpole:
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:
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!):
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:
We did our full suite of test strips; everything else was fine:
Early in our stay the air was rather unhealthy due to wildfire smoke from Canada:
Smoke map (a blue dot near the middle is our location):
We also had lightning and heavy rain nearby (blue location dot off to the right; the weather heading that way):
We got a bunch of packages delivered here; I used my folding cart to collect the heaviest of them:
The office and camp store:
A nice feature of this campground is the cook shack (or “kookhouse”) that was open for breakfast and dinner every day:
Menus:
The next door pavilion for eating and activities:
A tasty breakfast:
A dinner:
There were a lot of flies buzzing around, so I took the dinner back to our site and ate on the patio:
A strange historic artifact; kids, ask your parents:
Swmming pool:
Dog park:
Dog shower, with mini golf in the background:
Path:
Lots of tent sites:
Cabins:
Other sites:
Entrance sign:
