Any geologist can tell you how the Driftless was formed. It’s where flat prairie top breaks down into rolling hills, curves, and mounds that disrupt perspective across 24,000 square miles of southwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa, and the extreme northwestern corner of Illinois. Glaciers did not rub this area smooth. So, hills and bluffs (hence its other moniker, Bluff Country) are tucked within ancient springs, rivers, and positive vibes.
Explorers such as Dubuque, de Soto, and La Salle wrote the King of 17th-century France about the area’s furs and minerals. American regional artists such as “American Gothic” painter Grant Wood used the Driftless as a backdrop for singular landscapes. Today, rolling highways unspool roadside surprises for drifters. Off-roads dead-end into grassy meadows. Clear springs mean trout, while twisting rivers beget swimming holes. Find a canoe. Be watchful for Amish and horse-driven anything. Buttes, coulees, ridges, and rockways make scant cornfields, but allow flavorful pastures for cows, goats, and award-winning cheese bought directly from dairies. There will be cafés, and those cafés will feature pie.
Situate yourself in a river town like Galena, Ill. (former home of President Ulysses S. Grant). Here, Airbnbs are plentiful and Frank Lloyd Wright’s home Taliesin is a satisfying Wisconsin side trip. Blue Mounds, also in Wisconsin, has a state park with spectacular summer and autumn vistas, including Gays Mills, legendary for autumn apple orchards. Everywhere else, enjoy classic “pull-overs”: antique malls, bookstores, guitar shops, crafts, local beers, wines, foodstuffs. At the end of the day, the Driftless is the center of attraction.
