Blog
I Asked. You Answered. Now I Have Some Questions for You.
A few weeks ago, I announced my quest: Visit all 50 states before America’s 250th birthday on July 4th. I had 11 remaining—Arkansas, Kansas, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, Washington, and Alaska—and I asked if you had suggestions.
What arrived was not a trickle. It was a flood. Hundreds of emails, from readers in Fairbanks and Visby, Sweden; from retired wildlife biologists and Jesuit priests and 87-year-olds and environmental science teachers in Phoenix. You have collectively produced what might be the most detailed, lovingly opinionated, off-the-beaten-path guide to these 11 states I have ever encountered.
I want to share what you said. And then I want to ask you something.
What You Told Me
The single most-recommended destination in my entire inbox was Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. A world-class art museum in the Ozarks, built by the Walton family—and apparently, it is exactly as extraordinary as its reputation. Consider that recommendation well and truly made. It also has a special exhibit showing for the 250th.
South Dakota produced the most passionate emails. The Badlands—“badass, take water”—came up from many readers. Mt. Rushmore came up almost as much, though almost always with a counterpoint: Crazy Horse, which multiple readers called more meaningful; or Custer State Park, where one reader used to pay her kids for animal sightings to keep their eyes off their screens. One reader admitted he was dead set against visiting Rushmore—saying “a bunch of stone heads defacing a beautiful mountain, who cares?”—and then was completely won over after hiking the trail up close.
Washington produced more recommendations than any other state. The ferry system. The Olympic Peninsula. The Hoh Rain Forest. Mt. Rainier. Mt. St. Helens. The Underground Seattle tour. The LIGO gravitational wave observatory on the Hanford nuclear site, which has monthly public tours and which I am not missing. Eastern Washington’s Yakima Valley, where one reader described apple orchards on volcanic soil and hop fields carrying “the foreshadowing fragrance of future IPAs.” And the Moccasin Bar in Hayward, Wisconsin—cash only, taxidermy animals staged in dioramas playing poker and boxing, a world-record musky on the wall. No website.
For Nebraska: Several of you mentioned Carhenge. Several more mentioned the sandhill crane migration along the Platte River in March—which, as I write this, is happening right now. A Jesuit priest from Omaha described driving up through the Sandhills toward the Badlands as “a different kind of stunning beauty you won’t see anywhere else.” I believe him.
Iowa kept surprising me. Mason City came up from numerous readers independently: It has the last surviving Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel, the hometown of Meredith Willson (who wrote The Music Man), and puppets from The Sound of Music on display at the local art museum. I did not know any of this. The future birthplace of Captain Kirk is also in Iowa, in the town of Riverside, which I find deeply wonderful.
Idaho, I am told, contains incredible nature. A retired wildlife biologist sent me a list of fifteen places that don’t appear in any guidebook, including rivers that vanish underground and a fault scarp still visible from the 1983 earthquake. Craters of the Moon came up four times. The town of Arco—the first city in the world powered by atomic energy—sits right next door.
For Alaska, the advice was nearly unanimous: Go. Just go. One reader who has lived there 45 years wrote: “We love Atlas Obscura, but you don’t need smoke and mirrors in Alaska.” I believe him, too.
What I Notice Across All of It
Reading through hundreds of recommendations, a few themes emerge that say something about how this community thinks about travel.
Almost everyone pushes past the obvious. The marquee attraction gets mentioned, and then immediately qualified or redirected. Go to Rushmore, but Crazy Horse. Visit Seattle, but cross the Cascades. The instinct to find the less-trodden version runs deep in this inbox. It is, I think, the Atlas Obscura instinct made explicit.
Indigenous history comes up again and again, and always with moral weight. The flooding of Ojibwe land to create the Chippewa Flowage in Wisconsin. The Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma. The First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. Multiple readers specifically suggested skipping the Mt. Rushmore tourist shops and buying from Native artisans instead. This isn’t incidental. It feels like something this community carries collectively.
Food is always specific, never generic. Nobody says “eat at a good restaurant.” They say: Get a Maid-Rite in Iowa, a loose-meat sandwich served since 1926. Eat cheese curds in Wisconsin—“the squeakier, the fresher.” Get pie at Norske Nook. Have a coney dog at Coney Island on 104 E 3rd St in Grand Island, Nebraska, run by the original owner’s son, interior unchanged. These aren’t Yelp recommendations. They’re heirlooms.
And this surprised me: Frank Lloyd Wright is a secret connective thread through the whole trip. His last surviving hotel is in Mason City, Iowa. His Allen House is in Wichita, Kansas. His Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, has hotel rooms and a bar. His Taliesin is in Spring Green, Wisconsin. I could build an entire itinerary around one architect across four states. I might.
Where I’m Still Looking for More
I want to be honest: Kansas and Indiana got thinner treatment in the inbox than the other nine states. Kansas carries a reputation—“it’s flat,” multiple readers noted, often before and sometimes after their recommendations—that seems to suppress enthusiasm even among people who clearly love it. I know Monument Rocks exists. I know Lawrence has some of the richest Civil War history in America. But I want more. What are you not telling me about Kansas? Here is a video of one interesting little place I visited there so far.
Indiana also feels like it has secrets I haven’t unlocked. The dunes, the caves, the West Baden Springs Hotel with its extraordinary domed atrium—those came up. But I suspect there’s an Indiana that doesn’t get written about, and I want to know what it is. So here is my ask: What did I miss? What did your fellow readers get wrong, or underrate, or skip entirely on the above states? Are there places on this list you’d push back on? And what would you add?
Why I Trust You
Studies consistently find that friends and community members—people who share your values, your curiosity, your sense of what a good trip means—are the most reliable predictors of whether you’ll love a place. One analysis of millions of travel check-ins found that the people in your community shape your destination choices more powerfully than any algorithm. The intangibility of travel makes us especially dependent on the testimony of someone who has actually been there—not descriptions, but the lived experience of a person saying: Go, it surprised me, do not miss it.
The Atlas Obscura community self-selects for a particular kind of curiosity. You are not here for the obvious. You are not here for the sanitized version. The recommendations you sent are, almost without exception, from people who went somewhere, were surprised by it, and wanted to hand that surprise to someone else. That is an act of generosity. That is also, I think, why it feels so trustworthy—because it comes from the same place that wonder does.
I am going to all 11 states. I have four months. And I am taking your list with me.
Tell me what I missed. I’m at ceo@atlasobscura.com.
— Louise
