Making A Long Road Trip Fun: Western Wisconsin To Denver And Back

By Angie & Jeff

July 5, 2023

Over the holiday weekend, we had to fit in a road trip from our home in Western Wisconsin to our daughter’s home in Denver, Colorado to deliver a car. Approximately 2000 miles in 4 ½ days is not really anyone’s definition of fun, but we work to find the fun along the way and would like to share some of those random finds and gems with you. This post is not sharing the sites in geographical order or the chronological order we visited them in, so definitely check your route and maps to plan your stops if planning something similar.

Our destination for Friday night, leaving our home after work was Omaha, Nebraska. We knew it would be a very late arrival, but set Des Moines, Iowa as our dinner location and part of the trip to look forward to that night. Des Moines is not on everyone’s foodie lists, but in 2017 I road tripped to Lincoln, Nebraska for the eclipse with my friend Jessica. She had researched food stops along the way and Fong’s Pizza is one of our now favorites to come out of that trip.

Any time we are going to be anywhere near Des Moines, Fong’s Pizza is on the list to visit. Any time anyone we know mentions being in that area or road tripping near it, we recommend Fong’s Pizza to them.

It’s a very unique place in downtown Des Moines. (There used to be a handful of locations, but only the downtown location is currently open at the time of writing this post.) Fong’s Pizza mashes up a Chinese food restaurant (we’re told the building held King Ying Low, the first Chinese food restaurant in Iowa, if not the entire United States) and a Tiki bar.

The historic location has many stories to tell, but the main reason we visit is for the Crab Rangoon Pizza. Yes, it is as good as it sounds! It has a bit of a kick to it with the chili sauce, but it’s the perfect amount for our tastes. Besides the Crab Rangoon Pizza, Fong’s Pizza offers an array of other options. We saw a barbeque pizza and macaroni and cheese pizza on other tables during our visit and have had the Sweet and Sour Chicken pizza in a past visit. But, for us, it isn’t a visit to Fong’s Pizza without ordering Crab Rangoon Pizza.

Our late-night drive from Des Moines to Omaha for the first night was dark, so it was hard to find things to entertain. However, we did find the simultaneously blinking red lights on the wind turbines all around the highway that we could no longer actually see, except the eerie simultaneous blink of the red lights kept us intrigued through the end of that day’s drive.

There is plenty of humor to be found on the road. We drove into the past briefly in Omaha, Nebraska…

We also had fun when we found Funk, Nebraska and Wahoo, Nebraska on the map near our route on the road-trip.

Driving across Nebraska is not known as the favorite part of a cross country drive, but we look forward to our stop at a local favorite, Runza!

Runza is a Nebraska fast-food chain that you will find off most exits in Nebraska. This is another find that my friend Jessica discovered during our 2017 eclipse road-trip and Jeff and I continue to enjoy a Runza stop on each trip to or through Nebraska.

Runza kind of reminds me of our beloved Wisconsin chain, Culver’s, which we will share a post about soon with our favorite thrifty living tips at our local favorite. The menus are not that similar, but both are taking local state favorite foods and making them for the masses in a fast-casual environment.

Both chains started in their home state (Runza in 1949, Culver’s in 1984), both boast scratch made food, and both have now begun to expand beyond those state borders, too.

The sandwich that the restaurant is named for, Runza, is a mix of ground beef, cabbage, and onions and they have different takes on those from the Runza original to the Runza with cheese or the Runza Swiss Cheese Mushroom. I am not a big meat eater, but I really enjoy stopping at Runza when the opportunity presents itself.

When not stopping for local favorites for road-trip meals, we try to maximize the savings of apps for the various chains we frequent. We have already shared with you a bit about our thrifty living tips for Taco Bell and Firehouse Subs.

Another app that is a must have if you ever visit is McDonald’s. We will share a blog post in the future of our tips with this app specifically, but a quick note on this trip, we visited a McDonald’s early on one of our long day drives for breakfast and were both getting errors when trying to order the $1 breakfast sandwich deal the app offered.

When we mentioned this to the staff in the restaurant for ideas, they noted they knew their location was having trouble with the app and just gave us each our preferred breakfast sandwich at no cost! Full price without the app, this would have been about $10 spent.

Along our road-trips, we watch for opportunities to visit places we might not set as a destination itself along the route and also watch for signs for points of interest for quick stops and opportunities to stretch our legs.

On this trip, we happened upon the First Pony Express Station in Gothenburg, Nebraska and the World’s Tallest Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, Minnesota.

The First Pony Express Station got us to stop in Gothenburg, but we found a very charming, beautiful small town and enjoyed our brief drive through town and stroll through the park where the first Pony Express Station now sits. Nearby there is a free museum that we would have visited, too, but it was closed because we were there on a Monday.

As we approached Blue Earth, Minnesota, Jeff spotted a sign that we could see a nearly 60 foot tall Jolly Green Giant on the upcoming exit and our lunch location for that day was set. We had fun taking pictures with the Jolly Green Giant and mingling with other road-trippers who are interested in silly stops like us as we took turns taking one another’s group photos.

We also noticed a small statue of Sprout and that the town has a scavenger hunt throughout their town to find all 11 of them. We took the time to find 3 but thought this could be a fun stop with kids to break up a road trip!

The final stop along our road trip that I want to highlight is Orange City, Iowa. My friend Jessica, who I mentioned found Fong’s Pizza and Runza, grew up in Orange City. She has told me how it is a charming city displaying the Dutch heritage throughout the town and with people marching in parades in wooden shoes. The Netherlands is a favorite country of mine, so I have been planning a stop in Orange City for a while now and this road-trip was that opportunity!

In Orange City, we parked the car downtown and enjoyed strolling the streets and the park in the city center. We happened to stop in Orange City on the morning of the 4th of July and it was very quiet on that day with all shops and most restaurants closed.

We read about Orange City’s annual Tulip Festival in early May and hope to be back for that in a future year. Though, we did chat with one resident in the park who confessed that the Tulip Festival is sometimes a stem festival depending on that year’s weather. So, we said goodbye to Orange City for the day, but hope to be back.