Best Glamping near Madison, 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.

Such a nice campground. Nice big shady trees and manicured lawns. They sell campfire wood for 6$ a bundle on site so we had some great campfires going. They have nice long paved trails for walking and biking. We got to walk our dogs on it to avoid tick contact from the grassy trails. There was a cool suspension bridge that was fun to walk on. The showers were very nice and hot without a lot of traffic. 

There is no sewage hookup or water hook ups. They do that 50/30 amp sites available. There is a dump station right at the entrance to dump when you leave and it also has a separate fresh water station if you want to fill up right when you get there so youre not traveling with a bunch of water in your tank. 

It was a great campground and the falls were close by and palisades state park was also in the area with a nice hike. 

There is an extra $8 car fee per night that you have to pay on top of any camping fees. If you are staying longer than 5 days it better to just get the annual parking pass for $32, which would cover parking for all state parks and recreation areas in SD. 

They have great discounts if you are a veteran and south dakota resident.

We stopped here on our way through south Dakota headed back to Colorado. The staff were really friendly when we pulled in. Got us checked in right away, gave us directions to our site and sent us off. Thry also sell firewood for $5 a bundle. We are in tent site 4. There are only 4 strictly dedicated tent sites. you park across the street and walk a very short distance, maybe 200 feet to the site. The bathroom is in the parking lot along with a water source. The lake is on the other side of the parking lot. There is also a dumpster there in the parking lot.

The camp site is extremely spacious. plenty of room for tents if you have more then one. It's nice and mowed out with the bordering area still long providing an edge to the site. The four sites are clustered fairly close but the way it's landscaped, you won't see your neighbornuntil you step out to the path to your car. They all have fire rings with a grate to cook on. The picnic table has a nice shade canopy over top. The bathroom surprised me a little. most pit toilets are dark at night but this one has a light! it also has a trash can and hand sanitizer! it smells decent and it's very clean. it will quickly become BYTP but we are only here the one night so hopefully it won't run out. The lake is gorgous! it's a huge long lake and seems to be a favorite boat spot. water skis were abundant, which also meant it got pretty loud with boats buzzing, people partying and music blaring. this is why it lost a star. it was pretty loud up until probably 9 pm. The mosquitos are bad, bring bug spray!

I spent the night here and had to pay the entrance fee to the park as well as the camping fee for my tentsite. They had only a few tentsites available amid all the RV sites, but they were right on the edge of the playground, so the families had to walk right through my campsite to get to the play area. Not too big a deal as no one wanted to use the play area at night while I was sleeping, but still.  I also looked over at the power lines. There was a flush toilet facility close by but there was a very bright light on all night. Good for families needing to navigate in the dark but not wonderful if you like sleeping in darkness. And though I was told that quiet hours began at 10PM, the site next to me was quite loud through the trees until at least midnight so the quiet hours are not enforced. Meh. I don't think I'll be going back.

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.

This campground is still charging $17 for a camp site, $7 transaction fee and $7/day entrance fee despite the fact they have no running water. The toilets still flush. In the morning our car filled up with flies that bit us for hours before we were able to eliminate all of them. It is a 5 mile drive back to Luverne if you need supplies, and I was unable to locate a grocery store.

Two good things; they have a Free Little Library and at night the lawn was covered with fireflies

The campground was so miserable that the campground host had abandoned their trailer and was never present. We did have several locals drive through the campground to spy on us, presumably to see who was stupid enough to camp there. You are entirely responsible for knowing what site you reserved because there was no attempt to label reserves sites.

There is no privacy between sites. This is just a big lawn with driveways, picnic tables and fire pits. The landscaping is nicely done with blackberries popping out of some hedges and providing eye-level interest at the base of trees.

.