Backroad Odyssey : Travel Stories, Van Life & Road Trip Oddities
Traveling America's backroads, road trip experts - Noah and Noodles - explore fascinating locations overlooked while traveling.
Living out of a van, they unravel the - often shocking - story behind each neglected story or location.
If you love travel, exploration and unique locations - join us on the road!
Backroad Odyssey : Travel Stories, Van Life & Road Trip Oddities
The Driftless - Caves, Hills, and the Myth of Flyover Country
Today, we explore a region shrouded in mystery …
An isolated land of rugged hills, carved river valleys, and secluded relics of ages past.
The American Midwest.
Specifically, a region untouched by the many terraforming glaciers that flattened much of what we now refer to as the Upper Midwest.
What we find might surprise you...
Recording Locations:
Maquoketa Caves State Park
https://www.iowadnr.gov/places-go/state-parks/all-parks/maquoketa-caves-state-park
Potosi, Wisconsin
https://www.potosibrewery.com/
Governor Dodge State Park
https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/govdodge
Mines of Spain - Dubuque, Iowa
Highway 20, East of Dubuque
Works Cited:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30068294?searchText=glacial%20movement&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dglacial%2Bmovement%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A7adbd841d5b02ad978f1d3558444b56b
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30054867?searchText=the+driftless+region&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dthe%2Bdriftless%2Bregion%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3Ada2488f7a1a6ca5cd9e7a59f1218795c&seq=1
https://data.wgnhs.wisc.edu/pubshare/ES057.pdf
https://eaglebluffmn.org/driftless/
https://www.iowadnr.gov/places-go/state-parks/all-parks/maquoketa-caves-state-park
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1430&context=jias
https://www.wisconservation.org/the-driftless-region/
https://www.agatemag.com/2021/02/the-driftless-the-land-and-humans/
https://www.rafamedina.com/research/bryda/
Noah and Noodles here!
We want to extend a heartfelt thanks to every listener of Backroad Odyssey.
Your support fuels our passion and inspires us to keep sharing stories and discover overlooked locations.
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Welcome to the van. I'm your host, Noah, joined as always by my dog and co-host, Noodles the Woodle. Today, we're exploring a section of the country that's shrouded in mystery. An isolated land of rugged hills, carved river valleys, and secluded relics of ages past. I'm referring to the American Midwest. Specifically, thousands of acres of land in and around southern Wisconsin. It's a region untouched by the many terraforming glaciers that flattened much of what we now refer to as the Upper Midwest. What we find shatters any notion of uniformity you might have of the American Midwest. Sound good? Alright. Safe travel.
SPEAKER_01:So many possibilities can share watching to the sea.
SPEAKER_00:Oak trees line the crumbling heights south of town. The evening sun further saturates their green hue. The sight reminds you of the coming darkness. Best head back, you think to yourself. Fishermen, here for the trout, will soon populate the few bars that line Main Street. Better secure your spot for a night of Wisconsin old fashions. A plane passes through the clear sky as you take a breath. Reel in your line and follow the rushing creek back to your car. Just another day in the Driftless. Noodles and I are hiking in Southwest Wisconsin, near what's considered kind of the core of the Driftless region. Let's start with this. My whole life, people, when they find out I'm from the Midwest, without fail, ask me the following question. What do you do there? What is there to do there? It's an alright question, I think, if you haven't been here. It's not known for its nature, particularly. It's not an obvious cultural hub like LA or New York. But this perception of the Midwest as completely uninteresting is wrong. It just is. And it's a perception that is often reinforced by terms like the middle of nowhere in the boonies, and most terrible of all, fly over country. The implication is that there's nothing worth landing for. Nothing of note to explore. Of the many reasons I can give to disprove this assertion, the story of the driftless is a tale we'll tell to convince the skeptical among you. The Driftless, the 24,000 plus acres section of untouched land situated vaguely around southern Wisconsin, proves the following, I think. Flyover country is a fallacy. Not convinced? Keep listening. Confused? Let's start here. What is the driftless? The earth warms and cools and cycles. During the periods of cold, massive dormant glaciers wake and move southward. Each titanic ice mass flattens everything it encounters. Conversely, when the temperature increases, these glaciers melt and retreat north, leaving in their wake flattened, semi-featureless landscapes. This cycle of cooling and warming of glacier movement from north to south and back sculpts the land. Over time, active glaciers push masses of land, dig out lakes, and dent the crust of the earth itself. Enduring each glacier's Odyssey journey, material is also carried to and fro. Deposits of clay, silt, and large boulders, all called drift, are distributed throughout faraway lands. What's left behind in the now flattened land is then geologically different from the local bedrock. This drift left behind is the evidence needed to track the movement of ancient glaciers. Drift is found today from Kansas to Minnesota to Indiana and beyond. What is the drift list then? Well, it's land without drift. Land with no evidence of past glacial movement. Land untouched by the seemingly unstoppable barrage of northern glaciers moving south with the cooling periods of the earth. In all these periods of advancement and retreat, all the climate cycles, not once did an advancing glacier touch this unique small area of the Midwest. The result is a distinct topography. Steep hills, rocky bluffs, deep river valleys, sculpted caves, a landscape and unique biome that represents what much of the Midwest would have been if not for the glacial activity. For centuries, the question was asked, why? We're in Potosi, Wisconsin, right now, a town of some 600 people, but it's surrounded by bluffs, and there's a brewery right in the middle of town that uses limestone filtered water for their beer. I happen to be drinking one of their beers right now, made from that water. What's around me now is a good example of the driftless landscape. It's called karst topography. It's what the Midwest would have looked like if the glaciers didn't make their way down south. Rugged hills, carved river valleys, thin soil, high concentrations of natural springs, caves, very active erosion, and all in all, fast change in the landscape. If you're curious as to why this land is the way it is, is so changeable, malleable, rugged, we have to journey back even further. To a time when Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, the entire upper Midwest were altogether unrecognizable. Five hundred million years ago, shallow seas cover the upper Midwest of North America. In its slow currents, aquatic residents live, thrive, and eventually die, gifting their remains to the murky depths. Millions of years pass, sea levels drop, continents ascend. Countless calcium carbonate shells of long-dead and forgotten Midwestern sea creatures remain only now. After ages of compression, they exist as concentrated layers of limestone and dolomite. Both materials now make up the majority of the driftless region. And both limestone and dolomite have unique properties. Unlike more durable rocks, they both can be shaped, molded, and otherwise transformed more easily by nature. We're here at Makokata Caves State Park. It's a series of 13 or so caves, each of them more interesting than the last, more than just about any place. This is a great example of how easily moldable limestone and dolomite, which make up most of the driftless area, can be and are. But here's the interesting thing. Without the glaciers coming through to flatten everything around me right now, another mover and shaker and sculptor takes its place. Water. It's a narrow passage that connects the grand entrance to a staircase at the exit. I'm crunched to low. It's at least 15 degrees cooler, something like that, than outside, and the cave ceiling is literally right above my head. Below me, there are inches of water settled along the cave floor. And it's this water that's the key to the formation of these caves and to the formation of the drifless region all together. When it rains, a small amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed into the cascading water droplets. The now acidic rain easily enters the porous limestone and dolomite. In time, underground networks of caves and rivers form as this acidic water erodes the reactive stone. The many natural springs and sinkholes of the driftless are a result of this process. Meanwhile, at the surface, rivers and creeks forge winding paths and chisel away at the vulnerable bedrock. In the Driftless, the land is the sculpture. Water, its sculpture. We're now sitting outside one of the smaller caves at Makokata Caves State Park. Our question now, sitting here, is this. If the rocks of the driftless are so shapable, so moldable, how and why was the driftless area spared? Why did the glaciers pass by? There are a lot of theories out there, and for a while it was kind of a mystery, but here seems to be the consensus now. First, the Great Lakes, their basins, provided a kind of funnel that moved ice east and west, sparing the driftless area below. That's the first thing. Secondly, there are the highlands of north-central Wisconsin that prevented the glaciers from coming directly south onto the driftless. It helps me, at least, to think of the glaciers as really heavy, really slow-moving liquid. So it always will take the path of least resistance. Finally, and this is contested a bit, but I tend to believe it. Some geologists think the uh porous nature of the limestone and the dolomite of the drifless allow the melt water to drain easily, which reduces the lubrication beneath the ice sheets, hindering and slowing the movement of the glaciers. Here's a little thought. Have you ever had an ice cube, like a square ice cube, and put it on a flat surface and press down on it? Or even if you didn't, you can see at the very bottom of the ice cube there's water. And that's what causes the ice cube to move to and fro. That's basically what glaciers are, except infinitely more massive. Whatever the case, there's no drift in the driftless. We know they didn't make it here. And while glaciers never surrounded the entirety of the driftless area at one single time, this now special and unique area of the country stays untouched by glaciers, but not by people who have been here for quite some time. The first people in the driftless region are nomadic. Relentless in their chase of mastodons, mammoths, and megafauna, these nomadic bands craft tools from the exposed landscape around them. The glaciers, eventually, retreat, ushering in an era of the mound builders. Evidence of the mound builders can be seen today in the many low ceremonial mounds molded in the shape of animals, relics, and arrowheads that are scattered throughout the Driftless region. The Ho Chunk, Sok, Mesquaki, Kickapoo, I Wei, Dakota, and others all follow. Then the U.S. expands. Tribes are displaced, and the Driftless is largely then inhabited by pioneer farmers, homesteaders, and different waves of Norwegian, German, Swiss, and Czech immigrants. The legacy of which can be found in towns throughout the Driftless, towns like Decora, Iowa, Guttenberg, Reedsburg, Wesby, Wisconsin, and my personal favorite. The troll capital of the world, Mount Horrob, Wisconsin. Noodles and Dye are here at the beginning of the drive that leads down to my grandma's old farm. Uh it's tucked down a hill off of a highway in western Illinois, and it's driftless farming to a T. From its relatively thin soil, steep ridges, and most notably a flowing creek that my great grandma ensured her seven children developed a healthy fear of. She was terrified they'd drown. It worked. Incidentally, they all made it. But regardless, it's a private drive now. So I'll keep my distance. Feel a bit creepy, but that's alright. But my grandma's farm was a great example, and maybe still is. I think it's still a farm, but of what farming and consequently the culture of the driftless was and is. And there are cars coming around me now, so we're gonna ahead. Um this van isn't exactly covert. I feel like a clown car sometimes when people stare at me, but while I'm turning, I'll ask, what's the cultural difference then between the driftless region and the surrounding Midwest? I have a hunch that, like most everything, it comes back to the land. Unlike the flat expanses of a lot of the Midwest, the driftless is irregular. Where flat areas can and do support large-scale monoculture. That's the massive scale growing of one or two, three things, corn, soybeans, for example, the driftless area can't. It's just impractical. Harvesting machines can't efficiently traverse the landscape, the fields are smaller, and erosion is more likely to occur. Instead, the farms of the driftless are generally small and more versatile in what they do, what they grow. Like my grandma's farm. They'll all generally have dairy, vegetables, orchards, and poultry. They'll forage the surrounding woods, fish the streams, grow, and do their own thing. If this sounds like a homestead, you're not far off. The land itself encourages small-scale, diversified homesteading rather than industrial, large-scale farming. And because of this, you have many smaller farms in a compact area. Farmers in the Driftless know their neighbors. They know the springs on their land. They grow what they need largely organically and more than anything, tend to respect and value the unique, bountiful, biologically and geologically distinct land they live on. Land that also influences the distinct culture that now thrives as an irregular oasis in the heart of a flat Midwestern Sea. We're sitting along the Mississippi at the edge of the Driftless. Some final thoughts. We started this episode by talking about the term fly over the country. Whenever I think about using the term or hear someone using it, I try to remember that every place has history, has context, has value. If you take the time to make the uninteresting interesting, the world becomes a much more compelling and fun place to be, I think. Nowhere is this clearer than in the natural springs, expansive caverns and rolling hills of the driftless. The stale air of the airplane provokes a want for space. So you open your window and you breathe deeply. The cloudless day allows for a clear view of the passing landscape. Interconnected squares dance in a monochrome display of uniformity. For a time, the landscape is predictable. The defined borders of large farms come and go. Just as your eyes are about to close, a crinkle disrupts the uniformity. Deep green valleys, reflections of rushing water, and oblique sections of beige stone litter the landscape below. Before you conjure a question about the abnormality below, the repetition returns. And the pilot announces your initial descent into Chicago. After a pause, you close your window. Thoughts of the coming landing, deep dish, pizza, and an evening at Wrigley consume your mind. I want to thank each and every one of you for listening to Backroad Odyssey. A lot of work, a lot of research, travel, time, effort goes into this show, and I appreciate every second you spend with us. With that said, if you feel inclined, it helps tangibly, tremendously if you rate and review the show wherever you're listening now. In the show notes, I'll add a link to each place that we recorded at, that we visited, and I also want to encourage you. You know, next time you're on that plane, next time you are going to a place that seems like it has nothing, that it doesn't have much. Look into what's special about it. That's what makes traveling and existing interesting. You find value in wherever you are. That is what Noodle and I are trying to do. So with that said, with that said, be good to each other. And we're to next.
