Best Glamping near Brookings, SD

This is a truly magical place, and if you’ve ever read any of the Little House on the Prairie books and are anywhere near De Smet South Dakota, do yourself a favor and swing by.

The Campground

The Ingalls Homestead consists of two main parts. First is the "campground," which is a basically a large grassy slope where you can set up your tent for just $10. It includes hot showers, flush toilets, and a few picnic tables and fire-pits throughout the field. There's also fairly basic RV parking for $30 with electric and water hookups and a dump site as well as some basic but cool covered wagons for $60. We arrived just as the sun was setting, found a lovely spot for our tent, and then paid in the shop the next morning. The bathrooms were clean, the showers were a little strange but also clean and hot (basically a large room cordoned off by several shower curtains).

The Homestead

De Smet is where the Ingalls family lived during the "Long Winter" of 1880-1881, and the Ingalls Homestead is a "family run business" that brings to life many activities from the 1880s such as visiting a one-room schoolhouse, making a corn on the cob doll, going on a covered wagon ride, etc. It's truly hands-on and some of our favorite time was spent hanging out in "Pa's" lean-to barn with the barn kitties and riding horses and ponies. My oldest son also learned how to drive the covered wagon to the schoolhouse down the road (another treat). Each station on the self-guided tour has an activity with incredibly nice and informed hosts. Most of the buildings are based on the original plans and descriptions from the Ingalls family, though no original buildings remain on the site. Visiting the homestead is an additional $15 per person over the age of five, and while you could camp without visiting the homestead, it was definitely worth a half or full-day visit.

We camped here over the weekend with our dogs. The campground is within 10 miles off of I90.

The park is not very big so there are not many campsites. Some have electric hook up, others are just for tent camping. All of them provide a picnic table and a fire pit. They also have little log cabins. We stayed at campsite 6 which was a very good spot. Some of the other sites seemed very close together without much privacy or shade.

The park staff (rangers, camp host and volunteers) was extremely friendly. They always made sure that we had everything we needed. The rangers also offer different programs on the weekend like learning about geocaching or how to make campfire desserts.

There is one bathhouse for the entire campground. It seemed a little old but got cleaned daily. There are also several vault toilets around the area. From the campground you have access to the water. There are also several short hiking trails from where you can see the rock formations.

It was just a very short ride to the Devils Gulch (Jesse James historical site) or Split Rock Park. There is also a Dollar General close by. We would definitely recommend the campground.

A very cool and unique campsite on the grounds of the Laura Ingalls Homestead near De Smet, SD. Unique in that you can camp right on the open prairie and for only $10 a night. Just pick a spot of grass and you’re good to go. There are some picnic tables you can choose to be near or just head out on the frontier. There are also options to camp in a covered wagon as well as a bunkhouse. RV spots are available and include water and electric hookups. Well appointed and clean bathrooms (electricity and flush toilets) are on site with showers.

The other really cool thing about this spot—especially for families—are all of the fun activities at the homestead itself. There’s a one-room school house with tours, a barn with animals, a covered wagon ride where you (or your kids) can lead the horse-drawn wagon, opportunities to learn how to make a jump rope, twist hay, wash clothes—all things the Ingalls family had to do on a farm from long ago.

A night or two in the summer is great though with no shade for the campsites field, it can get warm but evenings on the prairie are gorgeous. All in all, a great spot to set up that is cheap but with nice facilities and staff.

We are new to the KOA chain and just learned they are on a tiered system. This location is a journey KOA, which means it is right off the highway and more of a place to stop than a nature experience. We were so grateful we choose to stay in a cabin (which had a/c) the tent sites are literally in parking spaces next to each other in the grass surrounding a child’s play area...rude. There are bright lights around the buildings that shine into your sites. The pool has a chain link fence around it. Because we were in a cabin with the air running, the highway noise was significantly muted. However if that’s not your situation, I’d seriously reconsider. The bathrooms were not up to the regular KOA standards I had come to expect. They just didn’t feel/look clean. The bed was not terrible and we were able to get a good night sleep. I don’t plan on staying at journey locations in the future unless absolutely necessary.

There’s a fair size staff working; you could see 3-5 people at any given time. Good selection in store open 8am to 9pm in July. Nice size pool and laundry room. Store seemed well stocked with a variety of items. The mini golf was the only thing run down but the kids played it 3 times and didn’t care.

There were 2 bathroom/shower houses both nice. The one by the laundry and game room seemed newer.

Laundry and bathrooms open 24 hours. Game room closed at 9pm.

Everyone was extremely nice and customer oriented there.

We upgraded to a patio so as not to drag everything out for one night. Very nice. I can’t comment on the grill as we “glamped” on our 5th night from PA and ordered Uber Eats. A friendly worker escorted the driver to our site via golf cart. There are also trees throughout and fences to give you a feeling of privacy. We pulled through the space and used risers to level it.

I used the laundry room and shower. Both were nice. They even had a full length mirror in the shower area. We’d stay there again and recommend.

Edit: My grandsons loved this because there was enough to do but “peaceful” too. Their words so we stopped on our return back from Yellowstone.