We arrived at Horse Thief Lake late on a Wednesday afternoon. Actually VERY late. It was around 7:00 pm on June 7, 2017. We were on a road trip and didn't have a firm schedule. We arrived without a reservation and were thrilled that they had three or four walk-ups available.

This campground serves both RVs and tent campers. The walk-up are was beautiful and quiet. We were in site 34, which is the closest to the road that circles through the campground, but it was above our site and we never noticed traffic.

It was early in June so many sites had reservations on them for the weekend, the walk-in area was less than half full. The sites are far enough away from each other that we were not bothered by any other campers.

The site had a great pad and nice wooden picnic table with a great fire ring. The fire ring was great in the morning as it was still pretty cool in early June.

Firewood was sold at the campground by the hosts for $5 a bundle. The hosts were very kind and kept the campground immaculate.

The vault restrooms were very clean, but there were MANY flies by the afternoon outside of the restroom.

We had some HEAVY rains while camping here and the people in the site closest to the lake, and near the top of the hill (amazingly) were flooded out and had to dry everything in the morning and move to another site.

We had no problem with critters bothering our camp. There are no bear boxes and the camp hosts told us they had never heard a report of bears being in their campground.

This was a great base camp for us. It is only 2 miles to Rushmore and we went to Custer's campground (and drove though TONS of animals including buffalo, prong horns and others, the Crazy Horse memorial and the Iron Road.