Somebody in the group chat suggested the Driftless region back in March, half-joking, and by June we had eleven cars committed and a hotel booked in La Crosse.
If you haven't driven through the Driftless, the name alone should tell you something: no glaciers ever flattened this part of Wisconsin, so instead of the flat farmland you'd expect from the Midwest, you get ridges, coulees, and roads that fold back on themselves for no reason other than the land told them to. We picked it up off I-90 and spent two days working our way along the Great River Road, which hugs the Mississippi close enough in places that you can watch a barge keep pace with you for a mile before the road climbs back into the bluffs.
Somewhere past Genoa, the guy in the Boxster ahead of us missed a turn chasing a photo op and the whole line had to double back down a hill nobody wanted to climb twice. Nobody was mad. It became the joke for the rest of the trip — anytime someone hesitated at an intersection, “don't Genoa it.”
That's the kind of thing you don't plan for and can't really manufacture. You can plan the route. You can't plan the moment that becomes the story everyone retells.
The hotel lobby in La Crosse had exactly four chairs and a couch that had seen better decades, and somehow that's where the trip actually happened. Ten of us crammed in there past midnight both nights, and the cars barely came up — it was old jobs, bad breakups, the kid who was learning to drive stick in his mom's Miata, someone's dad who'd owned eleven Corvettes and regretted selling every one of them. One guy, quiet the whole drive, turned out to have raced motorcycles in his twenties and had a story about a crash in Ohio that had the whole lobby leaning in.
Nobody was there for the cars, not really. The cars were just the reason we all ended up in the same lobby.
The second night we ate dinner on a patio overlooking the river, and the sun went down behind the bluffs on the Minnesota side in a way that made half the table stop mid-sentence to just watch it. Somebody tried to argue we could see three states from where we were sitting. Nobody actually knew for sure. We debated it for ten minutes and never settled it, which felt about right.
That's the part outsiders miss about this hobby. It looks like it's about horsepower and paint codes from the outside. Mostly it's an excuse. An excuse to be in a lobby at midnight with people you'd never have met otherwise. An excuse to sit on a patio and watch a sunset you'd have driven past on any other Tuesday.
The Great River Road gave us the scenery. It gave us switchbacks and overlooks and one truly excellent stretch just north of Trempealeau where the bluffs open up and the river spreads out wide enough to look like a lake. That part matters — nobody's pretending it doesn't.
But if you ask anyone who was there what they remember most, I'd bet on the lobby before the road. The Genoa detour before the switchbacks.
Plan the next drive. Pick a road that's actually worth the tank of gas. But leave room in the schedule for the parts you can't put on the itinerary — the wrong turn, the lobby that runs too late, the argument nobody can settle. Those are the parts people actually bring up a year later.
A few miles better prepared
The route may be the excuse, but a few familiar details make the day feel like yours. Keep it simple: a Frunk Club Aero Performance Cap for the long, bright stretches; a Frunk It Short Sleeve T-Shirt for the stop that turns into lunch; and a Frunk Club Woven Key Tag that is easy to find when everyone is ready to roll.
No overpacking required. Just bring the people who make the miles worth remembering.
— The Frunk Club