8 Days In Sioux Falls, SD: Here’s What We Did (& What We Missed Out On)

The first of four cities we visited in South Dakota was Sioux Falls, a city in the southeast of the state that’s close to the state’s borders with Minnesota and Iowa.

We booked an 8 night stay there to maximize the points we used for our hotel, plus it gave us time to check out the city. And by check out the city, I mean we checked out a bunch of great breweries, distilleries, etc.!

Here’s a roundup of everything that we did during our 8 days in Sioux Falls.

Where We Stayed

We stayed all 8 nights at the Holiday Inn Sioux Falls-City Centre. This was in the perfect location as it’s in the center of things downtown, so it’s within walking distance of everything there.

The hotel is a rarity in that it’s a Holiday Inn with a concierge lounge. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever come across a Holiday Inn in the US that has one – it’s that rare!

We booked our stay using points because we get every 4th night free on award stays thanks to the IHG Premier credit card; with us staying 8 nights, that meant both the 4th and 8th nights were free.

It was a nice stay overall – check out our full review here.

What We Did

Much of what we did in Sioux Falls involved eating and drinking, so that’s covered in the next section. However, we did find some other fun things to do in Sioux Falls.

Falls Park

Sioux Falls gets its name from the waterfalls in the city that are part of the Big Sioux River. Falls Park covers more than 125 acres and there are all kinds of great views of the falls thanks to the trails throughout the park.

Even if the waterfalls weren’t there, it would still be a beautiful park and I imagine it’s bustling with people in the summer.

The park has all kinds of other features including a five story observation tower (seen in the photo above), a pet-friendly café, the Stockyards Ag Experience (an interactive farming museum), the ruins of the Queen Bee Mill and more.

South Dakota is a very pet-friendly state and Falls Park is no exception. Truffles loved exploring the park as much as we did.

SculptureWalk

Sioux Falls has a surprisingly excellent public art scene called SculptureWalk. There’s probably ~100 sculptures installed throughout downtown, with the sculptures changing every year.

We visited in April 2023 and there were quite a few empty plinths as they were seemingly in the process of changing the sculptures for the 2023 exhibits. Still, there were still many great sculptures that we got to enjoy while walking around.

Palisades State Park

Palisades State Park is the second smallest state park in all of South Dakota. Despite its relatively petite size (it’s only slightly larger than Falls Park which isn’t a state park), it made for a nice trip for me and Truffles as we did a couple of hikes there along Split Rock Creek. Check out this post for more about Palisades State Park.

Things We Didn’t Do

This isn’t a section I normally include in these roundup posts, but there were a few things I wanted to highlight about Sioux Falls that we didn’t get to experience due to the time of year we visited.

Levitt At The Falls

Sioux Falls runs a series of 50 free concerts in the summer starting in early June and ending in early September. These are held at Levitt At The Falls which is at the entrance of Falls Park. It’s such a great initiative that I was a little disappointed we visited too early in the year to attend at least one of them.

Sioux Falls Historic Trolley Tour

From June to August Sioux Falls has a historic trolley tour that you can take around the city. It only costs $2 for an all-day pass which is great value, but again – visiting in April meant we missed out on that by a couple of months.

Falls Park Farmers Market

Something we missed by a matter of days was the Falls Park Farmers Market. This is held every Saturday from 8am-1pm from May-October. We left Sioux Falls on Sunday April 30, so it seems like we missed the Farmers Market by only six days (assuming it started the first Saturday in May).

Where We Ate & Drank

We ate and drank far too much in Sioux Falls which wasn’t good for our livers or our budget. Still, it was worth it as we had a great time doing it!

8 Pet-Friendly Breweries, Distilleries, Bars & Cafés

I already wrote a separate post about all the pet-friendly breweries, distilleries, bars and cafés that we went to in Sioux Falls, so be sure to check that out as there were some excellent places to eat and drink.

Minervas Restaurant

Some friends we’d not seen since early 2010 live in Sioux Falls, so we met up with them for dinner one evening and had a wonderful time catching up with them and meeting their two children who weren’t around back then.

They picked Minervas as it’s one of their favorite restaurants in Sioux Falls and it’s not hard to see why. Shae ordered steak with a side of asparagus and it was all cooked perfectly.

I ordered their salad bar because it was the most extensive and good quality salad bar I’ve ever seen and it was a great choice.

I ended up having two plates loaded with salad and was sad that I couldn’t fit even more in my stomach as it was all delicious. I’d also ordered one of their appetizers – chislic – as this is apparently a South Dakotan delicacy. Chislic is made of red meat – lamb, mutton, beef, etc. – and seasoned with garlic salt. The chislic I ordered at Minervas was beef chislic and was seasoned with garlic salt, fresh herbs and came with a side of BBQ sauce. The beef was incredibly tender and flavorful, so that was a great choice too.

Flyboy Donuts

On my birthday Shae had gone out to get some donuts from Flyboy Donuts – maple bacon and raspberry jelly donuts for me and chocolate covered and glazed for her. We didn’t end up eating them until the following day and so they weren’t as good as they would’ve been when fresh. The raspberry jelly donut didn’t seem like it would’ve been amazing even when fresh though, but the maple bacon donut was pretty good.

Final Thoughts

When we were in Rapid City later on during our time in South Dakota, a couple of different people said that Sioux Falls was boring, but had great shopping. I feel like that’s not fair on Sioux Falls as we enjoyed our eight days there.

Falls Park is beautiful, as is nearby Palisades State Park. SculptureWalk had some great art (and I say that as someone who doesn’t really appreciate art), I loved that they put on 50 free concerts in the summer and there are lots of pet-friendly breweries, distilleries, etc.

If I had to recommend one place in South Dakota to visit, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be Sioux Falls because so many of the state’s attractions – Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park, etc. – are all on the western half of the state. However, I’m definitely not sad that we got to visit Sioux Falls and experience just some of what it has to offer.