Falls Park

Today, Barbara and I got out and did some sightseeing.  We took a drive to nearby Falls Park in downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  This is a beautiful park with the main attraction being the waterfalls.  In the park the water of the Big Sioux River cascades over the Sioux Quartzite below.  This rock is extremely hard and in the early days of Sioux Falls it was used to build a lot of the buildings in town.  The quarries in town have been moved outside of town and the quartzite is now mainly used in road construction.  The park covers 123 acres and is mostly covered with grass, a visitors center, a restaurant, viewing tower and remnants of some of the historic buildings that once stood here.  The falls drops over 100 feet on its journey through the park with an average flow rate of 7,400 gallons each second.  After our adventure we enjoyed a nice lunch at nearby Red Robin. Yum!