Jan 31, 2024

Driving the Road To Nowhere – South Dakota

The first leg of my road trip down U.S. Highway 83 (aka “The Road To Nowhere”) through the heart of the country yielded some unexpected fun in North Dakota, such as Fort Mandan and the Lawrence Welk Birthplace.  What would the second leg through South Dakota bring? 

The answer:  Outside of Pierre, not much, unless you count an unanticipated off-road adventure. 


Dec 21, 2023

Scenes from the Lawrence Welk Birthplace, Strasburg, N.D.


Picture yourself cruising through the rolling hills and farmland of southern North Dakota early on a late summer morning. 


The sun is still rising and the dew has yet to completely evaporate.  Passing cars are few and far between. 


Then, suddenly, without warning you pass this sign near a quiet intersection with an otherwise barely noticeable gravel road.  What would you do?  Would you speed up and try to get away as quickly as possible?  Would you simply be amused by the happenstance and continue on, accepting that it’s past “tourist season” to visit?  

Or would you do what this commoner did, find the nearest spot to turn around and check it out anyway?  Of course, you would! 

Oct 25, 2023

Finding Fort Mandan and Lewis and Clark’s trail

One of the things I enjoy most about a loosely planned road trip is stopping at points of interest along the way which I either knew very little about or didn’t even know existed beforehand. It didn’t take me long on my drive on U.S. 83 (aka the Road To Nowhere) to make such a stop – just over an hours’ drive south from Minot, N.D., in fact.
The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center seemed to be a “can’t miss” site on the right side of the road. After all, which historical figures and famous trespassers are more important in North Dakota’s formative history? 

Sep 20, 2023

Driving the Road To Nowhere – North Dakota

When it comes to road trips, I’ve lived most of my life by the motto that getting there was half the fun.  In other words, the travel from Point A to Point B can be just as memorable as the destination.  This is especially true when you’re perfectly fine without having a set destination at all. 

That was my thought process when I set out to choose a route for my first solo road trip in many years.  I wanted to go where few others would think to travel.  I also wanted to have a true sense of solitude on the highway, where I could be alone with my thoughts for hours at a time.  So, after a combination of modern-day Google searching and old-school researching good ol’ Rand McNally, I decided to conquer what has been coined by fellow travelers as the “Road To Nowhere” … or at least most of it.

Officially designated as U.S. Highway 83, the Road To Nowhere stretches from the Canadian border just north of Westhope, N.D, to its southern terminus at the Mexican border crossing in Brownsville, Texas.  Yes, there are zigs and zags along the way, but until the route takes an abrupt turn along the Rio Grande at Laredo, it’s a fairly consistent north-south trajectory. 

How it became known as the Road To Nowhere is pretty apparent if you look at the route long enough.  The vast majority of the highway runs through some of the most sparsely populated parts of the country – the heart of the Great Plains and the Texas panhandle.  How few people live there?  Consider this:  The largest city between my starting point at Minot, N.D. and my end point at Laredo, Texas is Abilene, Texas, with roughly 125,000 people.  The distance on U.S. 83 between Minot and Abilene is about 1,240 miles.  In between, there are just five cities with a population greater than 10,000 – Bismarck, N.D. (74,000), Pierre, S.D. (14,000), North Platte, Neb. (24,000), Garden City, Kan, (28,000), and Liberal, Kan. (19,000).  

I chose my jumping on and jumping off points based on the amount of time I had to not just driver the route, but get there and back. 


A commoner dines at Baumgartner’s Cheese Store and Tavern, Monroe, Wis.

I wasn’t sure a place existed that could be the perfect representation of Wisconsin life, but then I traveled through Monroe, Wis., one week...