Custer State Park – A Loop Around Sylvan Lake

It can be kind of amazing how much of the world people have not seen. And how beauty is everywhere.

Before I moved to South Dakota, I honestly had no idea almost any of the beautiful things I saw in the western part of the So-Dak even existed.

But now I am quite glad I ventured out and made my way to all these beautiful places.

Custer State Park is one of the big known state parks in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It’s mostly known for its free roaming buffalo and scenic drives and hikes.

While we had a jam packed schedule for seeing western South Dakota in one weekend, we didn’t get to explore the entire park considering it’s quite large and it can’t really be done in the few hours we had to spare.

I then opted to at least see Sylvan Lake, which is known as their “crown jewel” of Custer State Park. And when we saw it, I can definitely see why.

First things first, when going to Custer State Park watch out for road closure signs. When we were hopefully trying to get onto the scenic drive of Needles Highway, we ended up at a road closure that made us eventually turn around and have to find another park entrance quite a few miles away. So definitely watch out for that.

But once we finally found a very pretty drive to the lake, it was all trees and definitely no service.

Sylvan Lake is a popular attraction if you like the National Treasure film, it was apparently in National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I personally haven’t seen that one, but now I think I might have to.

As soon as we got to the lake the sun was finally coming out and the rain had finally left and it was gorgeous!

Here’s a little Snapchat video I made when we arrived!

We decided to take the Sylvan Lake Shore Trail Loop, which is about a mile around. But in all honesty the way we went ended up being a dead-end of rocks above the dam and bridge and we were too lazy to find the loop around the whole park we ended up just turning around back the way we came.

But everything was gorgeous on this trail. The lake was beautiful and just everything seemed so perfect. You can do a lot of different activities on this lake like canoe or swim, but I assumed because of the hard rainy weather they had just experienced it was closed to the people.

We walked on and I took a bunch of pictures. Once we hit that bridge, you have to actually cross this little rock path to get to the bridge. The water levels were high so you can definitely get wet if you’re not careful.

But after a little rock climbing and stone stepping, we made it to the bridge and saw the lake on one side and the dam on the other. It was seriously a gorgeous day.

As we headed back we could see little fish in the water and quite a bit of people rock climbing and taking some great photos.

And as much as I wanted to stay longer and maybe go hike another trail in Custer State Park, we unfortunately had to go. I was very excited to have visited at least this beautiful lake and hope to one day visit again and maybe go into the water or at least find the real trail loop around the lake.

I’d definitely recommend everyone to visit this beautiful lake, people went on picnics or just did a small not really exhausting walk around the lake and enjoyed its peacefulness. I loved it and of course I went camera shutter happy with this place.

It costs $15 per vehicle and it’s a 7-day pass for the entire park. The park is open 24 hours and there are so much more to see than just Sylvan Lake and of course there are great places to stay around here.

Next time we go to Custer State Park, we are going to see those buffalo. Oh and don’t forget to stop and enjoy the driving scenery, it’s really quite a beautiful scene.

Want to see a round up of some of the other places I saw in South Dakota, check it out here!

Cheers!

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