Storybook Land and Wylie Park Campground in Aberdeen, SD: A Surprise Hit

travel dates: July, 2022

I don’t remember how I came across Storybook Land way back in the planning days before our 2022 summer trip. It was pretty much on the way between Theodore Roosevelt National Park and our next planned stop at the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet, SD. We needed something to break up the drive. And it looked amazing.

To me.

The rest of my family was not as excited, but we booked a one night stay anyway, because we needed somewhere to stop.

And everyone ended up loving it.

(I know they don’t look so much like they’re loving here. They were hot. But trust me).

Storybook Land, in fact, claimed 4th place that year in the Top Travel Memories competition, in a year that included places like Glacier National Park and the ancient cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park.

I’m not going to pretend that everyone needs to go plan a week long trip to Aberdeen, SD right now…but I will say that it made for an absolutely lovely overnight stop for our family, and that we wouldn’t have minded having another day to explore.

Aberdeen, SD is in the northeastern part of South Dakota; I tried to find you some bigger cities nearby to help you place it in your mind, but the best I could come up with is that it’s 200 miles north of Sioux Falls and around 300 miles west of Minneapolis. Things are pretty spread out up there. The important thing to us was that it was a couple of hours drive north of De Smet, SD, which was our next stop.

Wylie Park is a big city park in Aberdeen with a campground, all sort of recreational stuff like go karts, miniature golf, trails, a lake, and, of course…Storybook Land. Storybook Land is a small but charming little theme park based on, as you might expect, storybooks. Particularly the Wizard of Oz. There are a handful of rides, a petting zoo, a train, and a bunch of big set pieces depicting assorted fairy tales, fictional characters, etc.

I had been thinking originally that we’d need to check out Storybook Land in the morning before we left, because we had a 300+ mile drive the day before, and I assumed they’d close before or shortly after we arrived. But no! Storybook Land is open until 9 in season! At least the rides are. I think it’s actually open all the time if you just want to walk through and look at things. At any rate, we had plenty of time to get set up at the campground, walk over, and see the whole park before closing time. It was very hot on this whole stretch of our trip (second full Theodore Roosevelt day excepted), so evening touring was definitely the way to do it.

Admission is free, but there is a charge of $3/ride or 10 for $25 for the train ride, carousel, tiny roller coaster, spinny cup ride thing, and balloon ride. Without Abe we probably would have skipped everything except the train ride, but as it was we did ALL THE RIDES. (You might think that without Abe we would have skipped Storybook Land altogether, but you’d be wrong). It was not at all crowded while we were here and we never waited long for the rides (as you can see from Abe’s solo roller coaster ride photo).

There are TWO petting zoos here with extremely lively goats:

I’m finding the official website difficult to navigate, so I’m relying on my memory here to tell you that there’s also a wildlife/zoo area with local animals that you can either walk to the train will take you past it. We took the train, because trains are fun, and it was hot and we were tired.

But probably the main attraction here is the Land of Oz, a walk-through exhibit that basically takes you through the story.

The Land of Oz? So probably it’s because Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum grew up in Aberdeen? No, that’s New York. Surely he lived here while writing the book? No, that’s Chicago. The setting for the book? No, that’s Kansas, of course. BUT Baum did live in Aberdeen for three years once, years before his success as a writer, and his descriptions of Kansas in The Wizard of Oz are believed to have been inspired by his time in South Dakota.

Good enough!

(incidentally, L. Frank Baum’s Wikipedia page is a fascinating ride. Example: “At 20, Baum took on the national craze of breeding fancy poultry.”)

Anyway, you start off your journey into the Land of Oz in Dorothy’s house, which you exit through a completely dark hallway immersed in tornado sounds. It’s kind of weird, to be honest.

But after that you get to walk on the Yellow Brick Road and follow it through the story like Dorothy. It’s fun!

 

Gus wanted to pose with all of Dorothy’s friends:

There’s also a zip line!

At the exit of the land is a hot-air balloon themed spinny ride of course! (This isn’t the ride. But it’s near the ride):

Wylie Park Campground

Honestly, proximity to Storybook Land is the sole reason I wanted to stay at Wylie Park Campground. Aside from that, I was just hoping it was…fine. But it turned out to be a great campground on its own, with spacious, well-laid out sites and nice, modern facilities. And it’s a quick walk (or bike ride) to Storybook Land (and other stuff in the sprawling Wylie Park).

We had a long, spacious pull-through with a nice asphalt pad and concrete patio. We stayed in the south campground, where there are a total of 88 RV sites, split pretty evenly between full hook-up and W/E. There are more back-ins than pull-throughs, but the back-ins are also spacious and look easy to get into:

There are tent sites and cabins available as well. There’s a north campground, too, that we didn’t really see, but it has another 23 full hook-up sites. W/E sites are $37/night, and it’s a whole extra dollar if you have sewer. Basically, it’s a steal. We were there mid-week in July, and there were a lot of people there, but it definitely wasn’t full. My guess is that this is the kind of place that tends to fill up with local people on weekends in season (and a quick look at reservations for this coming July (as I’m writing this in mid-March) tells me I’m correct. Book early for weekends; you have a better chance of grabbing something closer to your dates if you’ll be there during the week).

Facilities are nice and modern, and there’s a good camp store/office at the front.

Next up: more south! With our return visit to De Smet, SD and the Ingalls Homestead

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