We (my son and I) had the best time on this tour. It is an all day excursion on a bus that picks you up from Fort Hays--where they have some of the sets from Dances With Wolves and a nice museum type area that has a lot of stills/props and a video running about the movie and the making of it. Tour price includes tour, breakfast and lunch along with admissions into the National and State Parks you will be going through.
I love being in the Black Hills to begin with and this tour just made it super fun. We bough the all day tour so we started out with breakfast at Fort Hays which was pretty good, and we are kind of food snobs so we're pretty choosy. They had biscuits/gravy, sausages, all you can eat pancakes and coffee and also lemonade and orange juice for those that don't drink coffee. There was a pianist as well during breakfast who played old timey songs like you'd find in an old west saloon. After breakfast it's fun to walk around the little boardwalk along the shops/areas gift shop type area and just relaxed a bit.
The bus picked us and everyone else on our tour (we had a full bus) just outside the chowhall and we were off. We had Pastor Bill as our guide and he was nothing short of a riot! I've never had so much fun on a tour before. He was so much fun to listen to, and he gave a lot of information about the Black Hills and the areas were were going through. The fact that he was able to get an 8 foot wide bus through an 8'4" wide tunnel causing no damage to either the bus or the tunnel still amazes me.
We drove through the mountains with stops at Mt Rushmore, a lunch stop at the State Game Lodge (buffet, not bad and is an add on charge) and at Sylvan Lake. Mount Rushmore was as majestic as always and not too terribly crowded. The State Game Lodge was as one would expect, it looks like a large old hunting lodge. Sylvan lake was beautiful and peaceful. It's at the base of Harney Peak--which is a monster climb when you have asthma. We have climbed that mountain before but not on this trip, it's a lovely hike up though.
The drive through Custer State Park didn't bring out many animals but they are finicky. We did see some buffalo, pronghorn and a nice but very curious mountain goat that stopped to watch us try to navigate the almost un-navigable tunnel.
At the end of the day, after all the sight seeing we ended with a chuckwagon dinner and a cowboy show. Excellent entertainment and food was really good. We'd do this again if we ever get back to the Black Hills.