Our Review Of Cedar Pass Lodge And Campground In Badlands National Park
Not too hard to get a pretty picture of Cedar Pass Lodge with this backdrop. You can see the small group of rental cabins in the foreground and the main building in the distance on the left of this picture. The campground is about a 1/4 mile away to the left. This picture is taken just after the sunset so the rocks are reflecting the beautiful reds and pinks and all you had to do to see it was just walk outside your door.
The Cabins At Cedar Pass Lodge Are Why We Loved Badlands So Much
The northern unit of Badlands National Park (the one everyone goes to) isn’t a large park and you can easily see the most popular sights in one day- drive the Loop Road, stop at the overlooks and take lots of pretty pictures, ogle some prairie dogs/ bison, and do a couple of short hikes. So you don’t really need to stay overnight in the park in order to feel like you have seen Badlands. But you should.
I have 3 words for you: Sunset - Stars - Sunrise. Each of those is spectacular in Badlands and worth a night’s stay in the park by itself but all three together means you should really make an overnight in the park a priority if you can.
We watched the changing colors of the sunrise against the rock formations and the open prairie for at least 30 minutes, no mean feat for 4 teen and pre-teen kids at 6 am. Sunset was equally fabulous, enjoyed with a Dixie cup of red wine and the kind of contentment that comes with a great day spent hiking and exploring a national park.
The stargazing was phenomenal too. The lack of light pollution in Badlands means you can see about 7,500 stars according to the NPS website (in person it felt like a million at least). You can easily see the Milky Way and even the Aurora Borealis if you are really lucky. It was hard to find the constellations I normally recognize because I never realized how many other stars are around them when you can see more than just the brightest ones. It was like seeing the night sky for the first time. (Unfortunately I have no great pictures of this because I forgot a tripod and I apparently shake too much to get a non- blurry picture. There is a lesson in there somewhere about caffeine overuse but I am choosing to ignore it.)
My brother and his kids stayed in the cabins at Cedar Pass Lodge in the summer of 2021 and he convinced me to stay in the park and not just drive in from Rapid City for the day. He was absolutely right. We had a great time in the cabins at Cedar Pass Lodge and loved being able to see the gorgeous scenery of the Badlands right outside our door. Maybe I can pass on the favor and convince you to make an overnight at Cedar Pass a part of your itinerary in Badlands National Park.
Sunrise from our cabins. Not bad right?
View of the back porches of the cabins at Cedar Pass Lodge in Badlands National Park. We hung out here for obvious reasons.
Basic Info About Cedar Pass Lodge
Cedar Pass Lodge is the only lodging option inside the park. (And frankly, one of the few lodging options even near the park- not a lot of stuff in this part of South Dakota.) It is located near the northeast entrance to the park and next to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center.
The Lodge consists of the main building (check-in, gift shop, small camp store, and a restaurant) plus 26 cabins behind the main building. The Lodge doesn’t actually have lodge rooms in it -- the cabins are the only accommodations available here. About 0.25 miles away is the Cedar Pass Campground, connected with a pedestrian walkway and run by the same people as the Lodge.
Cedar Pass Lodge, Restaurant, Gift Shop, and Campground all close seasonally. It is usually around the end of October until sometime in April. Be sure to check the website for official dates as each one of those entities will have slightly different schedules, i.e. the cabins have a different opening/ closing day from the restaurant. I believe the campground does keep a few sites available for the offseason if you are okay with dry camping- no potable water or flush bathrooms. I would call to make sure about this.
Cedar Pass Lodge is highlighted in purple in the bottom- right hand corner of the map of the northern unit of Badlands National Park.
A close- up of the map above. You can see the campground a little to the left of the lodge and how many trailheads are near Cedar pass Lodge. It is gret for getting an early start to your hiking, important when summer temps can reach a 100.
The Cabins At Cedar Pass Lodge
I loved the little cabins at Cedar Pass Lodge. I am usually not excited about national park lodgings, often feeling like you get “seen their best days” accommodations for “we’re staying at the Ritz” prices. But the cabins at Cedar Pass Lodge were redone in 2012-2013 so they are fairly new as park lodges go and nothing looked like it needed some TLC.
The cabins were built in nearby Rapid City and based on the original 1928 cabins in the park so they fit right into their environment. They have a great rustic feel but with all the modern amenities. The prices weren’t bad either, around $220 for a cabin that slept 6 people -- still more expensive than a comparable hotel room but not by much and especially well worth it considering the gorgeous scenery just outside your back porch. Or on your front porch. Each cabin has both which made them winners in my book before we even set foot inside.
Just imagine sitting out here with a cup of coffee in the morning watching the sunrise just over those rocks in the background. Or eating dinner at those picnic tables while watching the stars come out. That’s what makes the cabins at Cedar Pass Lodge so special.
We stayed in the 2 Q cabins (#113 and #114) which were next to each other. Each cabin had a futon in addition to the two queen beds so you could sleep 6 in there if you wanted. That might have been a little cozy but we found it fine with 3 people in one and 4 in the other. The futon meant that each kid got their own bed which is so helpful for keeping bickering to a minimum, especially when you are on a long family trip. And you got a table and 2 chairs and a little dresser too in these good- sized rooms.
The bathrooms were pretty spacious as well, with a sink, toilet, and shower that had plenty of hot water. And each room comes with a mini- fridge, microwave, single serving coffee maker, and satellite TV. Aaaand, drum roll please…. you get AC as well as heat, which is positively posh for a national park lodging. I mean it was everything you could want in a nice hotel room but in a cabin in a national park. The furniture was even stylish, down to the Adirondack chairs on the porches-- all handmade lodgepole pine to add to the rustic feel.
There were picnic tables scattered among the cabins so we ate our to-go dinner there. Each cabin had a good amount of separation from the one next to it and we only heard our neighbours arrive and unload because we were out on our porch. You couldn’t hear anything from inside the cabins. (Some of the King cabins are duplexes so they might be louder.)
From the cabin grouping, we walked a short bit to a small rock outcropping to watch the sunrise and sunset. On our way back from the sunset, we surprised some deer grazing off the back of our cabin. And once nightfall really set in, we sat back in our porch chairs and on the picnic tables and were awestruck by the stars. The next morning we watched the sunrise and wished we could stay another night.
There is no WiFi which was a negative for the kids but a big plus for the adults. The kids were forced to read or actually sit and talk to us. The horror! I had enough cell service (T- Mobile) for text messages and intermittently to use things like Google Maps but it was unreliable.
Booking A Cabin
You can book the cabins through the website but I found that a little difficult because I wasn’t sure if all of the queen cabins had the futon and could sleep 6 or that was just some of them. So I ended up calling to make our reservation and then having to call again and change it when we had flight changes. The woman at the front desk was super helpful and made sure we had 2 cabins next to each other and that both were the 2 queen cabins with futon that could sleep 6.
They keep some cabins for walk- ins and reservations over the phone, at least they did in 2021. So if you can’t find the booking you want through the website, I would call and double check that there is nothing available. And see if you can’t get on a waiting list. Like I said, they were very helpful over the phone.
Click on pictures below to enlarge
The loop road around the cabins had parking and picnic tables.
This is the map I was given at check- in. They highlighted our 2 cabins (#113 and #114) for us. You can see on this map the King cabins which are duplexes. They are # 101- 107 (except #103).
We sat on our little rock outcropping and watched the progression of colours across the sky during the sunset. The Cedar Pass Campground is in the background.
Cedar Pass Gift Shop/ Camp Store
The large main building in front of the cabins is where you check in/ out plus where you can find all the shopping and eating options inside the national park.
The Cedar Pass Lodge Gift Shop is quite large considering, and has some gorgeous Native American jewelry and artwork plus the requisite national park swag.
The camp store is small but has some grocery items and snack food as well as a small selection of outdoor gear and camping basics.
The small camp store in Cedar Pass Lodge has snack foods and some grocery items as well as some basic camping gear.
The Cedar Pass Restaurant
I can’t imagine running a restaurant in a national park is easy so I try to be pretty generous when evaluating. And we only ate one meal at the Cedar Pass Restaurant, dinner, and we got it to go so I can’t even really tell what the waitstaff was like. I can say the food was fine, tasty enough and definitely huge portions for the Indian tacos- no one was able to finish which is impressive in a group that includes teenage boys. The cheeseburgers were fine as well. It wasn’t anything I would go out of my way for but I would order it again if I was staying there. The prices were decent too, especially considering you are in the middle of nowhere.
The restaurant itself was a little meh, with a slightly run down diner vibe and it took forever to get our food so that’s the negatives. I would definitely do what we did and take your food to go and eat outside at the picnic tables or in your cabins. I mean the view is why you are there so why not soak up as much as you can.
We brought our own breakfast with us (yogurt, pastries, granola bars) and ate in our rooms but I did see our fellow cabin lodgers headed over to the restaurant in the morning. I asked one at checkout how it was and he said his biscuits and gravy was pretty good. So there you go.
The restaurant is closed during winter. Be sure to check opening/ closing dates for the restaurant if you are planning on eating here in the shoulder seasons as it can be different from the lodge and the campground.
Cedar Pass Campground
Our original plan was for some of our group to stay in a cabin and some to tent camp for our one night in Badlands. But as time got closer, I realized that there was a potential for super cold weather, plus we were flying so that meant packing all the camping stuff in a really large suitcase. I have done it before but usually for summer camping when you don’t have to bring the big sleeping bag. I got lazy and ended up reneging on the camping and opting for the creature comforts of the cabin- #sorrynotsorry.
I did walk and drive around the Cedar Pass Campground though to check it out for a possible future camping visit. I would love to come in the summer and bring my 3 man tent with a mostly net roof so I could see the stars while in the tent.
The campground has 96 sites spread out over 2 loops called Agate and Butte, as well as a group camp loop that has 4 sites. Each loop has a flush bathroom and Agate loop also has quarter showers. Some of the sites have electric hook- up but more than half are non- electric it looks like. No site has water hookup. There is a dump station over by the group camp loop.
Almost all of the campsites are completely exposed, there are like 5 trees in the whole campground and it is pretty flat. Wind can be a real issue here so be careful if you are tent camping. And don’t leave anything out on the picnic tables. And in summer, you are going to be hot during the day as it gets up into the upper 90s or even a 100.
Each campsite comes with a semi- sheltered picnic table but no fire rings or charcoal grills as fires are not allowed in the park. You can use a portable propane stove though. The sites are somewhat spaced apart but the lack of ground variation and trees made it seem like they were super close to each other, at least to me. I would definitely go for the sites on the outer edges of the loops as then you at least have one side without a neighbour.
The Cedar Pass Campground is within walking distance of the Lodge (0.25 miles and they have a nice sidewalk between the campground and the main building). It is very close to the ampitheater, which is right by the group camp. Apparently they do a wonderful stargazing program here in the summer which I would love to do and look through their telescopes.
Overall, I think this campground would be best for people in a sprinter van or other kind of “van life” camping. That way you could get a little bit of privacy but still be able to enjoy the scenery when you step outside.
Favorite Campsites
I liked the sites in Butte Loop a little better than the ones in Agate Loop just because they seemed like they had a little more space but you would be a little farther from the pay showers in Agate Loop if that is important to you. The campground isn’t huge though so nothing is a far walk. The campsites on the outer edge would be my first choice as you have an uninterrupted view of the prairie. So that would be 41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64, and 66 on Butte Loop and 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 on Agate Loop.
The campsites 41, 43, 45, and 46 on Agate Loop are close to the road but this isn’t exactly a busy highway so you don’t get much traffic at night but you would absolutely hear anything going by so keep that in mind if your kids are super light sleepers.
Booking A Campsite
You can book through the website but I couldn’t figure out how to get a specific campsite using it. The website just gives you choices of tent/ electric or non- electric/ and tells you the RV sizes the campsite can take. So if you wanted to make sure you got a site on the outer edge of a loop or near the showers, I would call and book.
Photo of Cedar Pass Camground from the Badlands Loop Road. As you can see, it is fairly flat and has very little shade.
You can see that some of the tent sites on Agate Loop are close to the main road but again, this isn’t a super busy highway at night. During the day in the summer though, there would be a fair amount of traffic though.
If You Are Up For Boondocking
Right next to the Pinnacles entrance to Badlands National Park (the entrance closest to Wall) is a wonderful place for boondocking. Perched along a drop-off, it is a large parcel of open land that is free to park on. It has a fabulous view out to the Badlands and we saw quite a few rigs up there as we drove by. I would be hesitant to tent camp there as the wind was quite fierce when we drove by but hey, you do you. If I had an RV/ camper/ van though and could do without a bathroom for a night, this would be my first choice for camping.
You can find the spot on Google Maps and people have posted great pictures and reviews. It is marked as Badlands Boondocking Area. Just look a little north of the Pinnacles Entrance to Badlands National Park.
Other Places To Stay Near Badlands National Park
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Choices are fairly limited as this is a rural area and tourism is so seasonal. If you are looking for hotels, Wall has a couple of budget chains and a cute little cabin resort right next the interstate - Badlands Frontier Cabins. If you like more hotel choice, I would stay in Rapid City. It is just an hour away on Interstate 90 from the Pinnacles Entrance to Badlands. It is an easy drive and you will find lots of hotels and restaurant choices there.
We stayed at the Residence Inn Rapid City for 2 nights and at the Fairfield Inn & Suites one night while in this part of South Dakota and really liked both (the Residence Inn maybe a little more as the breakfast area wasn’t quite as crowded and the rooms were slightly bigger). They are at the same exit just east of downtown Rapid City. At the same exit and attached to these hotels is a large indoor waterpark, the Watiki Waterpark, if that gets your kids interest.
If you are looking for a vacation rental in the area around the Badlands, again your choices are extremely limited. Instead, I would book in the Black Hills where you have hundreds of choices and are close to the amazing activities around there- Wind Cave National Park, Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore, the Mickelson Trail, etc. Then either commit to making the 1.5 hour drive each way over to Badlands for the day or schedule an overnight at the awesome cabins at Cedar Pass Lodge. Obviously, you know where I stand on that decision.
If you are looking for a vacation rentals, here are some I bookmarked for our trip. We didn’t end up renting one because of the way our schedule worked out but I wish we had been able to - so many of the options looked gorgeous and I always like coming back to a house better than a hotel room anyway.
Great value! Great location! Located walking distance to downtown Hill City! A 2 BR/ 2 BA house just behind the railroad tracks in Hill City (don’t worry, it is a tourist train that only runs a few times a day). Sleeps 6 total and you are easy walking distance to downtown and its restaurants and shops. Averages $188 a night.
Custom Black hills log cabin w/ views, secluded, 12 miles to MT Rushmore! A beautiful rustic 3 BR/ 2 BA log cabin in Hermosa which is on the east side of Custer State Park so a little closer to Badlands National Park. Sleeps 6 total and averages $362 a night.
Located next to Custer State Park 2b2bth A quiet 2 BR/ 2 BA cabin in a great location and with guided horseback rides available next door. Sleeps 9 total and averages $223 a night.
Hygge House on the Creek A cozy 2 BR/ 2 BA home along a picturesque creek not far from Rapid City. Sleeps 6 total and averages $224 a night.
Whitetail Springs Ranch-3 BR Log Cabin on Private Acreage w/ Personal Pond This large 3 BR/ 2 BA log home is near Custer but is super private as it is on a ranch. Sleeps 10 total, has a fun pinabll machine and great views off of the deck. Averages $313 a night.
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site
If you find yourself with a spare 30 minutes while near Badlands National Park, you should definitely swing by this neat place. For all of us that grew up in the Cold War, these subterranean missile silos were a huge part of the “Mutually Assured Destruction” philosophy. There are 3 sites all close together and right off of I-90 and it takes 2- 3 hours to see all 3 and do the tour of the Launch Control Facility underground. But if you have only a short time, at least swing by the Delta-09 site to see the missile silo with a Minuteman Missile inside. The kids found it fascinating.
Final Thoughts
I loved Badlands National Park and part of the reason why I liked it so much is because we stayed at Cedar Pass Lodge. Being able to enjoy the breathtaking sunset and sunrise, not to mention the awesome starry nights, made this trip special in a way I don’t think visiting the park just for the day would have. If you can swing it, definitely try to make an overnight in the cozy cabins at Cedar Pass Lodge in Badlands a priority. You won’t regret it.
Happy Trails!
Amanda
Another sunset picture for your viewing pleasure. Waaaay in the distance, there was a small herd of deer making their way across the prairie. Just one more thing to watch during Badlands’s epic evening show, making the kids hardly miss their phones. Well done Badlands!