Customer Reviews

Insiders' Guide to South Dakota's Black Hills & Badlands

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you are going to the Badlands or the Black Hills, this book is a must have. On our recent trip, this book was an invaluable guide to getting around and I would highly recommend it. It saved us tons of time that would have been wasted just driving around.

We bought this book only because the Moon Handbook was unavailable. We hoped to use this as a vacation planner. The book appears to have lots of information, but for us, interested in tent camping and hiking, with some in-town activities, the information was largely irrelevant. Things worth dwelling on--such as Spearfish Canyon--are mentioned with much less emphasis than the exhaustive coverage of shopping facilities, for example. The text is incessantly cheery and reads like a school newsletter. We would have preferred the intelligent critical evaluation that makes the Moon books such great reading--and such great resources.

My family just got back from South Dakota, where we used this book. I can't begin to tell you how far this book falls short. Want info. on hiking the Badlands? Forget it. Want to know about activities and food in Rapid City? You're pretty much out of luck.

The book's organization is atrocious. Restaurants in one place, lodging in another, attractions in another. So when you pull into a place, you have to flip all over the book just to figure things out.

Basics are missing. For example, say you want to know the best things to do in the Black Hills--it's very difficult to excavate from this book. Instead you learn about real estate, shopping, and many unneeded details. Hikes in the Black Hills? Forget it? How to tackle Wind Cave National Park? Little help.

After travelling around the world with opinionated and helpful Lonely Planet guides, I am sorely disappointed with this book. This book is definately better than nothing, but look elsewhere for help with your trip to beautiful South Dakota.

We took a South Dakota vacation and found this book to be great reading in our preparation and planning. It covers everything from lodging to attractions to activities to history and on and on.

This book, in combination with "Exploring the Black Hills and Badlands: A Guide for..." helped us have a better vacation than I ever expected.

This book was absolutely amazing! Everything we wanted to do and everything we didn't know we wanted to do was EASY TO FIND. I spent a bit of time marking the attractions we wanted to see and the routes we wanted to take and NOT ONCE did we get lost. I recommend the trip. However, I recommend it more with this book as a travel companion. For our next trip we plan on touring the South East, don't think I haven't looked to the Insiders' Guide books to help. Have a great time!

This is a GREAT book if you are visiting this area. It gives all sorts of information to make your trip more complete. It also gives background information and little insiders tips here and there. The only thing I would look elsewhere for is accomodations. It has good camping and B&B info but not nearly enough hotel and resort listings but you can get that anywhere. This book is worth it just for the INFORMATION included.