Experience the best of Sioux Falls

The Big Sioux River drops over ledges of pinkish quartzite in Falls Park, the reason the city grew here, and a viewing tower and the ruins of a nineteenth-century flour mill stand among the rocks. The same stone built the Old Courthouse Museum, a Romanesque courthouse of 1893 that now holds the city's local history.

Downtown, the Washington Pavilion combines a concert hall, an art museum and a science centre, and every summer the SculptureWalk lines the pavements with sculptures. The Great Plains Zoo and the riverside parks fill out the city, and Palisades State Park, with quartzite cliffs along Split Rock Creek, is a short drive north-east.

South Dakota's table shows in kuchen, a custard pastry of German-Russian origin that is the state dessert, and in chislic, cubes of fried or grilled meat eaten with toothpicks. Winters here are long and hard, thunderstorms roll across the prairie in summer, and autumn is the gentlest season.