Landing at Aberdeen Regional Airport in Aberdeen puts you right in the middle of things, with prairie lakes, pheasant country, and small-town South Dakota within easy reach. Aberdeen is a railroad and farm hub on the James River plain, a tidy city of tree-lined streets, a college campus, and a downtown that still has a working 1920s theater. L. Frank Baum lived here before writing The Wizard of Oz, and the town has leaned into the connection with a yellow brick road of its own.

Standout experiences around Aberdeen: - Walk through Storybook Land and the Land of Oz at Wylie Park, free and built for families - Explore the Dacotah Prairie Museum for homestead and Lakota history - Hunt pheasants in fall, when the whole region fills with blaze orange - Catch a film or concert at the restored Capitol Theatre downtown - Watch migrating geese and pelicans at Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge - Fish or paddle Richmond Lake and Mina Lake just outside town - Join the Brown County Fair in August for rodeo, livestock shows, and concerts

Aberdeen sits in a quiet corner of the northern plains where distances are long and the sky is wide. Watertown and its glacial lakes are about 90 minutes southeast, Huron is a similar drive south, and Mobridge and the Missouri River are about an hour and a half west. Local bakeries still turn out kuchen, the custard-filled cake brought by German-Russian settlers that became the state dessert. Come in October for the pheasant opener or in summer for lake days and the fair.