Best Midwest Road Trips?

[Molandfreak]

Hey guys, so my grandma promised me a road trip of my choice as a high school graduation present! By that I am assuming she means nothing too far out of the reach from MN, in the midwest. Do any of you have any ideas of must-sees? All of my ideas are kind of lengthy...

[froggie]

My suggestion:  do more than just ride in a car.  Stop and look at stuff.  Visit places.  Bring a bike.  Go for a hike.  SOMETHING besides just riding in the car, eating, and sleeping.

[Brandon]

Depends on which direction you head from Minnesota.  You have lots of places in Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula within reach.  Visit the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan, for example.

[Molandfreak]

My suggestion:  do more than just ride in a car.  Stop and look at stuff.  Visit places.  Bring a bike.  Go for a hike.  SOMETHING besides just riding in the car, eating, and sleeping.

All of which I was planning on! Especially biking, I'm an avid biker! Thanks

[Molandfreak]

Depends on which direction you head from Minnesota.  You have lots of places in Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula within reach.  Visit the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan, for example.

Never been there, that's high on my list! I haven't experienced much of the U.P. yet

[Scott5114]

What are you interested in, exactly? County collecting? Highway clinching? Old bridges? Alignment hunting? Scenery?

[JREwing78]

Get your passport and do the Lake Superior Circle Tour.

[Mdcastle]

Mount Rushmore?

[oscar]

Get your passport and do the Lake Superior Circle Tour.

Or at least MN 61 from Duluth to the Canadian border.

[oscar]

Mount Rushmore?

You can add to that the Badlands, the Crazy Horse memorial u/c, and lots of other stuff in the Black Hills. 

Before heading back, you can head north to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park along I-94, which has its own under-publicized badlands.

[Molandfreak]

Mount Rushmore?

You can add to that the Badlands, the Crazy Horse memorial u/c, and lots of other stuff in the Black Hills. 

Before heading back, you can head north to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park along I-94, which has its own under-publicized badlands.

That would be nice! Never been anywhere in North Dakota beyond Fargo! I actually went to the Black Hills on a school trip last year! It would be cool to go there again and visit more places

Get your passport and do the Lake Superior Circle Tour.

Already planning that as a separate trip sometime in August

[Molandfreak]

What are you interested in, exactly? County collecting? Highway clinching? Old bridges? Alignment hunting? Scenery?

Mostly scenery, my grandma isn't exactly the biggest roadgeek

[kphoger]

If you head down Chicago way, I suggest Starved Rock State Park (IL) and the Indiana Dunes, as well as downtown Chicago.

Kansas City is a cool city to visit if you have some money to spend, but I don't know how it is to visit on the cheap.

Personally, I'd probably do the U.P. and some of lower Michigan as well.

[bugo]

The Dakotas and Nebraska.

[agentsteel53]

I'd recommend Wisconsin as being surprisingly scenic.  or, if you really want to make it a reach, go to Four Corners.

[J N Winkler]

Kansas City is a cool city to visit if you have some money to spend, but I don't know how it is to visit on the cheap.

It is not a budget-buster, especially for culture vultures.  The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (which is my personal main KC draw) has free admission.  There are other museums which also have free admission on at least one day of the week, and still others where the admissions charges are nominal, or at least were when I last visited them (the position may have changed since the mid-1990's, especially on the Kansas side where arts funding has been cut to the bone).  Country Club Plaza is well worth visiting for the architecture (and costs nothing to window-shop), and Ward Parkway is not bad for cycling or a scenic drive.  Crown Center has the Hallmark Cards visitors' center, with free admission.  The Liberty Memorial has been awarded the Congressional distinction of being the national museum for World War I, but there is an admissions charge and I felt the exhibits were a bit text-heavy and the exposition a little vague.

On the Kansas side Johnson County has the Electric House, which is a museum of suburbia, and if your taste runs to the fine arts, the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence (on the KU campus) is a nice supplement to the Nelson-Atkins.  Topeka also has the Curry murals in the state capitol, and the Brown v. Board of Education national historic park.

If you are into roads history research, Kansas City metro (Lee's Summit specifically) has the National Archives and Records Administration satellite facility for the midwest region.  I know the states covered include Kansas north all the way to North Dakota, as well as Missouri and Iowa, but I am not sure if Minnesota is included.  It costs nothing to go there and do research, but it is best to send an email in advance stating your general area of interest so the appropriate finding aids can be pulled for you, and you should also bring a digital camera (a fast shutter cycle is ideal) so you can take camera copies of documents that are of interest to you.  The Lee's Summit NARA facility is the records repository for the Midwest regional and state BPR/FHWA offices, and records are grouped by state.  Typically there is a general correspondence file covering various design policy issues which the state DOTs raised with FHWA, and then there are project files arranged by federal-aid project number, each of which deals with issues specific to a given project.  For Kansas I have found, among other things, a proposed plan for a trumpet interchange at I-135/21st Street in Wichita (ultimately a volleyball was built, which was reconstructed about 20 years later into a diamond), and correspondence dealing with a controversy in the 1950's about whether ROW purchased for a surface-arterial upgrade of US 50 in Johnson County could be used to develop it into a freeway.

Kansas City is a regional retail destination for northeast Kansas and western Missouri, so there has long been a tendency to think of it primarily as a place to shop, but post-2008 I feel that is just courting disappointment--selection has gone down with disposable income and customer footfall, so the brick-and-mortar retail which KC used to do well doesn't really compete with Amazon's Emporium of Everything Under The Sun.  With the museums, however, Kansas City has more than enough to justify a multi-day visit.

[Scott5114]

Kansas City also has a wide range of roadgeeking options. Since it straddles the state line, you can experience how KDOT and MoDOT handle similar situations and play compare-and-contrast with them, which I always find to be kind of fun. Downtown freeways are pretty substandard and usually move at a decent clip, so you may only want to head through that if driving through that sort of condition is fun to you (plus, you get to see the oddly-suffixed exits of the "alphabet loop"–only place in the US you will see an Exit 2Y). You can see the termini of two 2dis (I-29 and I-49) and there are several 3dis to clinch (I-635 is a one that I personally like), as well as several Kansas and Missouri state routes. Kansas freeway signage is generally second to none and you might run across a few "why didn't my state think of that?" moments (though from my experience Mn/DOT is generally pretty okay, so this will apply less so than to someone from, say, Oklahoma or New Mexico). If you are after old signs, I think there are still a few button copy signs kicking around the Missouri side (Kansas never used it), and the Quindaro neighborhood of the Kansas side is home to an original green Kansas Turnpike sign.

[hobsini2]

Let me give you some good food options throughout the Midwest that I have encountered in my travels.

Wisconsin
* Appleton (Outagamie Co) - "Machine Shed" exit US 41 at College Ave, go west.  Home cooking type restaurant similar to Cracker Barrel but better food IMO.  I love the Pork Ribs.
* Egg Harbor (Door Co) - "Shipwrecked" on Hwy 42. Light blue outside color restaurant featuring the best Walleye fish fry I ever had.
* Green Lake (Green Lake Co) - "Norton's" on Bus Hwy 23 (S Lawson Dr) on the west end of town with the dining room having a wonderful view of Green Lake.
* Oshkosh (Winnebago Co) - "Benvenuto's" off US 41 east frontage rd (Koeller St) north of 9th Ave, south of Witzel Ave in a retail plaza with the movie theatre. Really good and reasonable Italian.
* Oshkosh (Winnebago Co) - "Vitali's" on Murdock St east of Main St. The best Italian in town but also a bit more pricy.
*Pewaukee (Waukesha Co) - "Machine Shed" exit I-94 on to Hwy 164 North, next to the Raddison.
*Winneconne (Winnebago Co) - "Fin and Feather" on Hwy 116 at the Wolf River drawbridge. Good food and very scenic with boaters on the river/Wolf Lake in the Summer.

Illinois
*Chicago (Cook Co) - "Philly's Best" on W Jackson Blvd just east of Halsted St. Best Philly Cheesesteak outside of Philadelphia.
*Chicago (Cook Co) - "D'Agastino's" on W Addison St at Southport Ave, a couple blocks west of Wrigley Field. Best Chicago Style Deep Dish that is a small chain (4 stores).
*Rockford (Winnebago Co) - "Machine Shed" on Bus US 20 (E State St) west of the I-39/90 Tollway exit.

Iowa
*Davenport (Scott Co) - "Machine Shed" I-80 exit on to Hwy 130 (Northwest Blvd) and head southeast.
*Des Moines (Polk Co) - "Machine Shed" I-35/80 exit on to US 6 (Hickman Rd) East.

Missouri
*Kansas City (Jackson Co) - "Jess n Jim's Steakhouse" E 135th St about a mile east of the state line at a railroad crossing. Best KC Style Beef Ribs.
*Ozark (Christian Co) - "Lambert's" Off US 65 at Hwy J. Good food, interesting atmosphere. They "throw" rolls around the place.
*Sikeston (Scott Co) - "Lambert's" US 62 (Malone Ave) west of I-55.

South Dakota
*Rapid City (Pennington Co) - "Firehouse Brewing Co" on W Main St about 3 blocks east of I-190.  Really good pub style food at a reasonable cost.

[kphoger]

Let me give you some good food options throughout the Midwest that I have encountered in my travels.

Illinois
*Chicago (Cook Co) - Anywhere

FTFY.

Seriously, every Chicago visitor needs to eat Chicago-style pizza.  And, I see you're from Minnesota, so it needs to be said:  Old Chicago does not serve Chicago-style pizza.

[on_wisconsin]

I'd recommend Wisconsin as being surprisingly scenic.

This.









all from Google image search- NONE OF THESE ARE MINE
Hell, even I-94 northwest of Black River Falls can be quite scenic. US 10 west of Osseo has to be my personal dark horse for one of the most scenic major highways in the state. Also US 14 from Madison to La Crosse is a must for fall foliage gawking.

[kphoger]

Hell, even I-94 northwest of Black River Falls can be quite scenic. US 10 west of Osseo has to be my personal dark horse for one of the most scenic major highways in the state. Also US 14 from Madison to La Crosse is a must for fall foliage gawking.

In fact, some of your photos reminded me specifically of the Black River Falls—Osseo area.

[hobsini2]

Some of my favorite scenery is around Green Lake in East Central Wisconsin and the Driftless Area of SW Wisconsin.
None of these pics are mine though.

Green Lake:
http://epod.typepad.com/.a/6a0105371bb32c970b011570df3d50970c-750wi
http://www.menupix.com/town_img/GreenLakeWIHP.jpg

SW Wisconsin:
http://www.lonesomehollow.com/files/2010/11/Dans-photo.jpg
http://www.zanewilliamsphotography.com/wisconsinstock/wisconsinstock-pic/Williams_panoramic_wi.jpg

[hobsini2]

Let me give you some good food options throughout the Midwest that I have encountered in my travels.

Illinois
*Chicago (Cook Co) - Anywhere

FTFY.

Seriously, every Chicago visitor needs to eat Chicago-style pizza.  And, I see you're from Minnesota, so it needs to be said:  Old Chicago does not serve Chicago-style pizza.

Not all Chicago Style Deep Dish in Chicago is the same though. That's why I gave him my favorite place in the city. Connie's is ok. Gino's East is my 2nd favorite. Giordono's is my 3rd. The only Deep Dish Pizzerias i absolutely despise are Lou Malnoti's and Nancy's. My problem with both is that the crust is very soggy and the sauce is terrible.

[bugo]

It's barely in the midwest, but southeastern Oklahoma is a largely unknown gem.  I recommend the Talimena Skyline Drive or US 259.  US 271 is a nice drive as well.

I second Wisconsin.  Even the interstates are scenic.  The first time I drove through it, I didn't expect anything out of it.  I was surprised.  The picturesque farms with the red barns and the rolling hills along I-94 between Milwaukee and Madison are charming.

If you go to KC, be sure to try some local BBQ.  I recommend Gates or LC's.  I hear Oklahoma Joe's is good too but I've never had it.  I'd avoid Arthur Bryant's because it's not typical KC BBQ and the sauce is very weird.  It's still pretty good though.

[kphoger]

Let me give you some good food options throughout the Midwest that I have encountered in my travels.

Illinois
*Chicago (Cook Co) - Anywhere

FTFY.

Seriously, every Chicago visitor needs to eat Chicago-style pizza.  And, I see you're from Minnesota, so it needs to be said:  Old Chicago does not serve Chicago-style pizza.

Not all Chicago Style Deep Dish in Chicago is the same though. That's why I gave him my favorite place in the city. Connie's is ok. Gino's East is my 2nd favorite. Giordono's is my 3rd. The only Deep Dish Pizzerias i absolutely despise are Lou Malnoti's and Nancy's. My problem with both is that the crust is very soggy and the sauce is terrible.

That's funny:  I've never eaten at Lou Malnatis' or Nancy's!  I know what you mean about the crust, though.  It can make or break it.

I had a bad experience the only time I've been to Gino's, and Giordano's is close to my heart for personal reasons.  I must say, eating at Giordano's downtown is a cool experience just due to its location; it's one of my favorite (and one of the most affordable) places to eat downtown.