Sacora Station Campground

Came here last night and was assured the receipt the owner would produce for the stay would be sufficient for the DMV renewal appt I had the next day. Needless to say it wasn't so money spent, time lost and now unable to get another appt while we are here.

By the way, bath house the worst I have see and the toilets... well the facilities are atrocious. Nice looking pool though. Roads are narrow and busted up in many places. "Going to be a bumpy ride!"

Massive yard light leads me to believe there is a fair bit of crime. Many residents in broken down trailers etc.

We are Black Hills locals who remember the Station back when Woody owned a strip club and biker bar there. As such, I would have loved to give it a better review than I'm about to give.

My husband and I sold our house in Spearfish, and with the teenager not yet back in school, we figured we'd buy a camper and tour around the Black Hills for the remainder of the season like a Stay-cation. My husband and I both work in Rapid, so we thought we'd venture over to the Pennington/Custer/Meade area this week. We also looked for a campground where our ugly duckling of a camper would fit it nicely.

Which is why we chose the Black Hills Station. It's right off the Interstate, and next to a run-down trailer park with burned out trailers.

I figured our camper, while in mint condition, wouldn't fit into an upscale RV resort until she got a new paint job. But surely a dive like the Station would be perfect. I used their online registration and booked 5 days.

On Sunday we pulled in about 5PM and got checked in. The maintenance/grounds man was helpful and kind. However, right after we got parked a white pickup came up hot, it had Florida plates. It was the General Manager and she wasn't happy that we were there. She said our camper was too old and "dated" looking, and that they have a policy that the RV has to be 10 years old or newer.

Her exact words were "No one will stay with us if they see you here."

Weird... because a 1985 Fleetwood and a 1990s Winnebago were there, but my Peterson Excel was somehow single-handedly going to ruin her run-down campground business?

My husband asked her if it was the colors of the camper (typical 70s brown and yellow) that she had a problem with, he noted that the paint job might be "dated" looking but wasn't chipped or in bad shape, and he offered to show her inside and outside of the camper to prove it was in great working condition and in mint shape. She declined the tour and said she would be fine letting us stay there.

We were both pretty taken back by the rudeness of the GM. Especially given the fact that her campground looks far more "dated" and run-down than our camper.

After she left we went to hook up to shore power. The camper runs 30amp, but the Van needs 120 GFI's. Out of 4 GFI's, only one worked between two sites. The maintenance guy came over and let us power his 30amp converter so we could plug in.

Broken outlets and a rude GM were our first 15 minutes there. And then, as I looked around our site I noticed an unbelievable amount of trash and cigarette butts. There were RV parts strewn about and each site near us was really rutted out, 4 of the sites towards the end are almost grown-over and needs new gravel and leveling.

A few days later the GM stopped by our site again. This time she was drunk and had her dog with her. And this is why I'd live to give a negetive 5 star review. Intoxicated managers are never going to be ok.

My son doesn't like dogs, he's scared of them, and my husband is allergic. Apparently the GM has no common curtesy to leave her dog at home when coming to reserved sites to talk with people she doesn't know.

What she had to talk to us about this time was the fact that I had used my work car, a Subaru which lives in Rapid City, to come bring my son lunch one day. She ended up charging us 5 days worth of an "extra car" for having my work car there all of 3 hours on one day.

After the charge came on our credit card, I ended up just bringing the work car back to the campsite the last 2 nights. It was inconvenient, but if I'm being charged for it, I'm gonna use it. So upon check-out today, my husband and I had to play car-shuttle-checkers in order to leave the Subaru near Rapid while we headed back to Spearfish.

Our buddies own Riverside RV park in Belle, so that's where we are this week while we await a new paint job. Unlike The Station, Riverside is clean, shaddy, gorgeous, quiet, and operated by wonderful and kind people. It may be a longer drive to Custer attractions from here, but the hospitality can not be beat.