RV rows step up a mountainside above Rapid City in terraces, each pad leveled into the slope, with the ridgeline of the Black Hills filling the view to the west. The week's drives fan out from that pad. Mount Rushmore fills one day, bison on Custer State Park's back roads the next, the Badlands wall out on the prairie whichever day the forecast is clear.
Keeping one pad in town for the whole week suits a family in a full-size motorhome. Nobody breaks camp in the morning, the long drives come back to a shower and a laundry, and the evenings go to grilling outside instead of hunting for a site at dusk. A good order is two or three nights in town for Rushmore and Custer, a few at Pactola Reservoir in the middle, then the last nights back in town with the Badlands saved for the end.
Rapid City RV Park and Campground is where those terraced rows are, with pull-through sites, a pool, a bath house and laundry. The Rapid City/Black Hills KOA Holiday, off Hwy 44, is open year-round, so a winter or shoulder-season week still has a pad waiting in town. Hart Ranch Camping Resort is the third name you'll hear for a longer stay.
Rushmore, Custer State Park and the Badlands as day drives
Mount Rushmore is the easy first morning out, the faces carved into the granite above Keystone with most of the day still ahead for lunch in town and a wander. Custer State Park is the long day, bison grazing along the Wildlife Loop and granite spires crowding the curves of Needles Highway.
Tunnels on Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road decide which of those roads a motorhome can drive. The Black Hills RV page has the tunnel dimensions, Custer's campground limits, and the big-rig resorts around Hill City, Keystone and Custer. For two people, or anyone who would rather sleep inside Custer than drive back each night, the Rapid City campervan page runs the Wildlife Loop and Rushmore in a smaller rig.
Give the Badlands a clear day, when the pale banded walls stand up off the grassland along the Loop Road and the prairie runs flat behind them. If one day out there turns into a night, the Badlands RV page covers Cedar Pass for a rig.
Pactola Reservoir's south shore for a few dry nights
Midweek, when the drives start to run together, a few nights at Pactola Reservoir trade the terrace in town for pine shade and a walk down to the water. The beach and two boat ramps are close enough to reach on foot from the south-shore campground, so the rig stays put and the days go to swimming and launching whatever you brought up the hill.
The Pactola Reservoir Campground has drinking water and vault toilets but no electric hookups, which makes these the dry nights of the week. Leave town with the fresh-water tank full and the holding tanks empty, and save the reset for your next hookup night back in Rapid City.
Pad lengths vary across the loops on the campground's Recreation.gov listing, with some back-in gravel sites capping RVs and trailers at 28 feet. Pick the Pactola site before you pick the rig, because that site's length decides which motorhome comes along.