Ready for a trip off the typical tourism path? Explore S.D. Great Finds

This paid piece is sponsored by the South Dakota Department of Tourism.

After three decades away from where she grew up, Lisa Garriss has found an ideal approach for getting to know South Dakota again in a whole new way.

“Sioux Falls has definitely changed,” said Garriss, a Washington High School and Augustana University grad, who returned with her husband 18 months ago after spending 30 years living on the East Coast.

“I wanted to see what was out there, what’s close, so I’d been going to different websites looking to find what’s in the area and events going on.”

A visit to TravelSouthDakota.com led her to the South Dakota Department of Tourism’s passport program, which began connecting Garriss and her family with “Great Finds” across the state.

“We launched the passport program at the beginning of the summer tourism season as a way to truly highlight our whole state,” said Erin Weinzettel of the Tourism Department.

“Coming off the pandemic, our key iconic destinations were so busy we knew we had an opportunity to encourage people to move across the state throughout the entire year.”

That’s especially true for people who live in or near South Dakota. For Garriss, the first stops in her passport experience included the Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum and the Big Sioux Recreation Area.

“We did some beautiful walks and really enjoyed it and didn’t realize it was practically in our backyard because we live near Brandon,” she said. “And then my dad and I took a road trip south and stopped at some places on the passport. We took all these side roads and ended up finding other things — an ice cream shop or diner or Main Street place — and we had so much fun doing it.”

The Department of Tourism is planning to offer multiple passport programs, each with its own theme. The first, South Dakota Great Finds, “highlights hidden gems, from small businesses to parks,” Weinzettel said.

“Even if you’ve lived in South Dakota for years, we guarantee you don’t know about some of these places, or you’ve never stopped, or you don’t know the story behind it.”

Getting started is easy. You sign up through TravelSouthDakota.com, receive an email and text message to confirm, launch the program on your phone and interact with it as you go on a road trip.

Add up enough stops at passport destinations, and you’ll be rewarded with prizes. Ten stops earn you a South Dakota sticker pack, while 100 will send you home with a South Dakota Osprey backpack and the chance to win a vacation giveaway. In between, there are shirts, caps and a Big Frig tumbler to be earned.

“It’s just about educating our residents and making them advocates of travel and tourism in our state,” Weinzettel said.

That’s how Garriss used it recently when her grandson visited the state for the first time.

“We went out to the Black Hills and did some stops there, and he loved it,” she said. “We did a couple stops from the passport on the way out there. He loved the prairie dog ranch.”

More than 1,500 people have signed up already for the first passport, and a new one just launched. The new State of Create passport highlights arts and culture across the state. Sign up for that one to get connected with festivals, sculptures, historic theaters, galleries and more.

Additional passports will be released in the coming months, including a tribal nations passport and one that further highlights the state park system.

Garriss and her family are far from done traveling. They used the Great Finds passport to plan an October trip that will include the John Lopez Studio in Lemmon.

“I think we have 15 stops along the way, and it’s just Great Finds for a few days, and we’ll hit them all. I’m really curious about the International Museum of Vinegar,” she said. “I don’t think I would have explored some of these areas without the passport. It’s interactive, and you can see what’s there along the way. It’s taken us to a lot of fun, neat destinations.”

Click here to connect with the passport program and begin discovering your own Great Finds.