Editor�?Ts Letter

On drives across Nebraska when our kids were young, I learned this much: stop before the back seat mutinies.

One of those stops was Fort Cody Trading Post in North Platte, now run by third-generation owners Nick and Marcia Henline. On our early trips, we knew it as Chuck and Leigh Henline�?Ts Fort Cody: a two-headed calf, Buffalo Bill�?Ts Miniature Wild West Show and enough souvenirs to make a child believe five dollars could solve everything.

Our children posed in the covered wagon out back, looking more ready for westward migration than the next hundred miles. Angela and I gave them a few dollars, then let the gift shop do the rest.

Ten minutes out of the car can do what another bag of pretzels can�?Tt.

I still think about that stop when I pass a hand-painted sign or an exit I hadn�?Tt planned to take. Along Interstate 80, rest areas near Grand Island, York and Kearney still hold Nebraska�?Ts 1976 bicentennial sculptures. Nebraska also gave travelers steel, limestone, sharp angles and a public art argument that has lasted five decades.

The 2026 Nebraska Passport offers 70 reasons to stop, nudging travelers toward bakeries, bookstores, museums, oddball outposts and main streets they might otherwise pass. Bobbie and Craig Connolly of Lincoln have their own ritual: Bobbie researches each stop, paints a small rock inspired by it and leaves it behind.

At Ashfall Fossil Beds near Royal, visitors look down from the Hubbard Rhino Barn at rhino skeletons still resting in volcanic ash from an eruption tied to the Yellowstone hotspot. Interns work with brushes, children peer into microscopes and a fossilized dog track marks an animal�?Ts path long before roads crossed Nebraska.

In Cedar County is Bow Valley, where Schuetzenfest, held every five years, celebrates 130 years of German heritage with white uniforms, rifles, music, food and a wooden bird 30 feet in the air. When the bird comes down, somebody wins the crown and a child carries home a splinter.

So now we want to hear from you.

What Nebraska roadside stop still earns your brake lights? What place did your parents make you visit that you now take your children or grandchildren to see? What bakery, small museum, mural, overlook or local oddity belongs in your family�?Ts road-trip stories?

Send us a note at editor@nebraskalife.com. Send a photo if you have one. We may share reader favorites in an upcoming issue.

Nebraska trips rarely stay as straight as the map suggests. They have detours, bathroom breaks, public art arguments and children in covered wagons.

Pull over when you can.