By Travel Wisconsin

Set course for Viroqua and the Driftless Region in the southwest corner of Wisconsin. Here you’ll find the pace is a step slower, the smiles noticeably wider and the offerings far beyond what you’d expect from a small town.

As you pull into town on Main Street, stop at Viroqua Café, a 1940s gas station turned hip coffee shop serving hometown favorite Kickapoo Coffee. The food menu is inspired by the area’s organic bounty.

Hit the shops

Explore downtown with a variety of shops that surprise and delight, starting at Gary’s Rock Shop, where the owner actually mines the stones herself, from dig spots out West and in the Midwest too. She also makes the jewelry displayed in the store.

Next, visit the Viroqua Public Market, filled with local vendors selling artisan wares. Be sure to visit Viva Gallery, an artists’ cooperative featuring fine works of local artists. Make time to see the colorful murals that brighten the sides of buildings downtown.

Music lovers will want to spend some time at Parrish Music, where you’ll find unusual acoustic instruments plus the largest inventory of ukuleles in the Midwest. Then, catch a show at the Historic Temple Theatre, a 552-seat venue with big-name live music, theater and comedy performances.

Jaali’s Dollies has handmade felted dolls and cute critters created by the owner, a local fiber artist. If you’d like to explore the off-road trails at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, Bluedog Cycles can hook you up with a rental bike. A few blocks off Main Street is Driftless Books & Music, located in a former tobacco warehouse circa 1906, where some half-million books are housed and the owner gifts a free book to every child.

Farming heritage

If you visit before the end of October, make a point to shop the local farmers’ market where some 50 vendors, all from within a 100-mile radius, sell their products and goods. The offerings include organic produce, Amish quilts and baked treats.

Join the locals in taking a class at Driftless Folk School, where courses focus on traditional crafts like basketry, baking and beeswax candle making, along with sustainable farming and energy self-sufficiency.

Explore the backroads

Motor along the less-traveled Rustic Roads 55 and 56 in Vernon County to see Amish farms and log cabins set against a backdrop of lingering fall foliage.

Take the short drive out of town to Vernon Vineyards featuring 75 gorgeous acres of grapevines on dramatically rolling hills. Pause in the tasting room to savor the wines and the views. Try the Juliet house red, crafted with local cranberries and grapes.

The Kickapoo River and Timber Coulee Creek are two prime spots for trout fishing.

Three dining spots

You must not leave without a meal (or two) at Driftless Café. Exemplary and ever-changing farm-to-table cuisine has put this place on the national culinary map.

Grab lunch at the Viroqua Food Cooperative, where the hot bar menu changes daily. There’s a Sunday brunch too. The co-op emphasizes organic local foods to promote the health of people and the environment, so stock up before you head home. They even have local kombucha on tap.

Pop in to Tangled Hickory Wine Bar where you can nibble from their signature Wisconsin artisan cheese board, sip a glass of wine or a craft cocktail and listen to live music.

Spend the night

No reason to rush home, especially when the accommodations are so relaxing.

Nature Nooks Retreat, just footsteps from the Kickapoo River, offers cabin and lodge accommodations large enough for a group.

Viroqua Heritage Inn, an 1897 house with leaded glass windows and restored woodwork, is located in a quiet residential neighborhood just a block off Main Street.

Kickapoo Valley Ranch, the epitome of hospitality, has cabins surrounded by thousands of acres for those looking for peace and quiet.

Other Driftless stops

Westby to the North: The Westby Cooperative Creamery community of family farms produces sustainable dairy foods and the store is open seven days a week. Branches Winery has a vineyard of cold-climate grapes. Stay at Westby House Inn for a romantic retreat from the daily grind.

The Westby Cooperative Creamery community of family farms produces sustainable dairy foods and the store is open seven days a week. Branches Winery has a vineyard of cold-climate grapes. Stay at Westby House Inn for a romantic retreat from the daily grind. Coon Valley to the North: Home to Class I trout streams and Norskedalen (which means Norwegian Valley) Nature & Heritage Center.

Home to Class I trout streams and Norskedalen (which means Norwegian Valley) Nature & Heritage Center. La Farge to the East: Take an Organic Valley store and plant tour, which focuses on its founding mission of saving family farms through organic farming. Then, visit Kickapoo Valley Reserve, a nearly 8,600-acre tract of land with sandstone outcroppings that tower over the quiet Kickapoo River.

Take an Organic Valley store and plant tour, which focuses on its founding mission of saving family farms through organic farming. Then, visit Kickapoo Valley Reserve, a nearly 8,600-acre tract of land with sandstone outcroppings that tower over the quiet Kickapoo River. Gays Mills to the South: Take a bite out of the “Apple Capital of Wisconsin” with a half-dozen orchards.

Take a bite out of the “Apple Capital of Wisconsin” with a half-dozen orchards. Soldiers Grove to the South: Head to Old Oak Inn for a Friday fish fry. Rent the entire house at Inn at Lonesome Hollow and roam the property’s hiking trails.

Decoding “Driftless”

The topography in the southwest region of Wisconsin is the result of the area being skirted by the land-flattening glaciers of the last Ice Age some 10,000 years ago that left behind “drift,” thereby earning the “Driftless” designation. It’s marked by forested hillsides and valleys with clear running streams.

DriftlessWisconsin.com

Viroqua-Wisconsin.com