Rapid City

Rapid City is about as far from the sea as anywhere in the country, so swimming means mountain lakes and reservoirs. Sheridan Lake, Pactola Reservoir and Sylvan Lake sit in the pine-covered hills within about half an hour, with small sandy or gravel shores and clear water that reaches roughly 20°C to 22°C in July and August. Canyon Lake on the city's west side is better for a picnic than a swim.

The season is short, the shores are modest and most visitors treat a lake swim as a pause on a driving day rather than a reason to come. Anyone who wants a proper beach should look elsewhere.

Eating here is plain Great Plains cooking: steakhouses, bison burgers and steaks, chislic (skewered cubes of fried or grilled meat, a South Dakota bar staple), and Indian tacos built on Lakota fry bread, which turn up at diners, powwows and roadside stands. Downtown around Main Street has a cluster of brewpubs, coffee houses and a few kitchens cooking with more ambition, and there are wineries and craft distillers scattered through the hills.

Beyond that the range thins quickly. Highway strips are dominated by chains, and the tourist towns in the hills lean on fudge, pie and family dinners. Good for a hearty meal after a day outdoors, not a place to travel to for food.

Within the city itself the sights are modest. Downtown is lined with life-size bronze statues of every past American president on its street corners, an easy self-guided walk. The Journey Museum tells the story of the Black Hills from geology through Lakota history to the gold rush, the Museum of Geology at the School of Mines holds fine fossils from the Badlands, and the South Dakota Air and Space Museum beside Ellsworth Air Force Base displays Cold War aircraft outdoors. Dinosaur Park's 1930s concrete dinosaurs and a Norwegian-style stave church in the western hills round out the list.

The brick downtown is pleasant but the big landmarks people associate with Rapid City all lie out in the hills.

Going out centres on a few blocks of downtown around Main Street Square, with brewpubs, sports bars, a cocktail lounge or two and some country-music bars. It is friendly and unpretentious, and most of it winds down well before midnight on weeknights. There is very little club life.

The one big exception is early August, when the Sturgis motorcycle rally, half an hour north, floods the region with riders and the bars run loud and late. The rest of the year a visitor's evenings are mostly dinner, a beer and an early start for the hills.

This is the city's real strength. The Black Hills begin at the western edge of town: granite spires, ponderosa forest, trout streams and narrow roads such as the Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road. Custer State Park, under an hour away, has one of the largest free-roaming bison herds in the country along with pronghorn, elk and begging burros. Wind Cave and Jewel Cave are national park and monument respectively, with long guided tours underground, and Badlands National Park's eroded pink and grey ridges are about an hour east.

Hikers climb Black Elk Peak, cyclists ride the 175km Mickelson Trail on an old rail bed, and climbers head to the Needles. Winter brings snow and a small ski area near Lead.

Mount Rushmore is about half an hour away, and the Crazy Horse Memorial, still being carved out of a mountain with a large museum of Native American culture, is a little further on. Deadwood, an hour north, is a gold-rush town of brick streets and Wild West legend, with Lead's old Homestake mine next door. Keystone, Hill City and Custer are small tourist towns along the way, and Spearfish sits at the mouth of a fine canyon.

To the south, Hot Springs has the Mammoth Site, where mammoth bones lie where they fell. East along the interstate are the Minuteman Missile silo and Wall, a prairie town famous for its sprawling roadside drugstore. Everything needs a car.

The Black Hills have been a family road-trip destination for generations, and it shows. In and around town there is a long-running reptile park, a drive-through park with bears and wolves, the concrete dinosaurs on a hilltop in Dinosaur Park, and Storybook Island, a free park of nursery-rhyme scenes. Further out, children can watch bison stop traffic in Custer State Park, go underground on cave tours, pan for gold, and dig at the Mammoth Site.

The area is safe, relaxed and used to children, with plenty of motels with pools and campgrounds. The drawbacks are distance, as most days involve hours in the car, and the summer crowds at Mount Rushmore.

A car is effectively essential. Downtown is compact and easy on foot, and a small city bus system serves residential areas, but it does not reach Mount Rushmore, the state parks or the hill towns. Seasonal tour buses cover the main sights for visitors without wheels.

Driving itself is easy: traffic is light, parking is simple, and the scenic roads through the hills are part of the pleasure, though some have tight tunnels and hairpins and slow going behind summer traffic.

Shopping is small-scale and regional. Black Hills gold jewellery, with its tri-colour grape-leaf designs, is the local speciality, and downtown has galleries and shops selling Lakota quillwork, beadwork, star quilts and art, alongside Western boots and hats. Beyond that it is a regional mall, big-box stores and plenty of souvenir shops in Keystone and Wall. Nobody comes here to shop.

Rapid City costs less than most American tourist destinations, with motels and casual meals that are reasonable by national standards and many free sights, such as the presidents' statues and Dinosaur Park. Two things push the bill up: the summer peak, when rooms near the hills fill and prices climb, and the motorcycle rally week in August, when rooms for many miles around are very expensive. A rental car, fuel and park entry fees are an unavoidable part of the cost. Late spring and early autumn are much cheaper.

Performing arts are modest. The Black Hills Symphony Orchestra gives a regular season, the civic centre hosts touring concerts, rodeos and Broadway shows, and a downtown arts centre puts on small productions. In summer a long-established playhouse inside Custer State Park stages plays in the pines, and powwows, above all the large one held each autumn in the civic centre, are the most distinctive performances a visitor can see. Otherwise, live music means a band in a downtown bar.

There is little spa culture in the city itself beyond a few day spas and hotel spas. The main draw is the town of Hot Springs, about an hour south, where a historic indoor pool fed by warm natural springs has drawn bathers since the 1890s, with a couple of smaller spring-fed spas nearby. The rest of the restorative appeal comes from slow cabin stays and quiet lodges in the hills rather than from any bathing tradition.