TRAILSIDE
Wyoming
Although much of the Great American route across Wyoming remains to be filled in, open segments of the trail are completed in a handful of Cowboy State communities, including Cody. Here, Buffalo Bill Cody built the Irma Hotel in 1902, naming it after his youngest daughter. He often stayed at the hotel, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, upon returning from his Wild West Show tours. Throughout the state, you’ll see hearty Western fare on menus, including the bison burger; the hotel’s restaurant serves up a version it calls the buffalo burger. Just south of the downtown hotel, walk off your meal by taking a 2-mile loop on the Great American’s Beck Lake Bike Park Trails (rtc.li/beck-lake-park).
Idaho
they weren’t the only ones; by 1870, 25% of the state’s residents were foreign born. The Germans brought with them a sandwich made of yeast bread surrounding a pocket filled with beef, cabbage and onions that’s still strongly identified with Nebraska to this day. The savory snack grew in popularity after the Runza restaurant named for it opened in Lincoln in 1949 and expanded across Nebraska. In the 1970s, employees even wore lederhosen- style uniforms as a nod to the sandwich’s German roots. The restaurant’s Norfolk location is less than 2 miles from the Cowboy trailhead in Ta-Ha-Zouka Park.
Nebraska Spanning more than 200 miles, Nebraska’s Cowboy Trail (rtc.li/ cowboy) is one of the longest rail-trails in the country and a key part of the Great American’s route across the state. It begins on the state’s eastern end in Norfolk, a community founded in 1866 by German settlers attracted to the opportunity to farm here under the Homestead Act, which was passed just a few years earlier. And franchise, family owned for just shy of a century, is less than a half mile from the trail along Linn Creek (rtc.li/marshalltown-trails). shakes and other sandwiches in more than 70 locations across the Upper Midwest. The Great American route spans Iowa from the Mississippi to the Missouri, and you’ll find Taylor’s Maid- Rite located at its center in Marshalltown. The landmark
PHOTOS: (Top) A huckleberry cobbler at the Coeur d’Alene Resort’s Dockside restaurant | Courtesy Coeur d’Alene Resort; (left) employees and customers at Taylor’s Maid-Rite in the early 1940s | Courtesy Taylor’s Maid-Rite; (right) a buffalo burger at Wyoming’s Irma Hotel and Restaurant | Courtesy Irma Hotel and Restaurant; (bottom) Nebraska’s iconic pocket sandwich | Courtesy Runza Restaurants. Wallace Huckleberry Festival & Fun Run (wallacehuckfest.com) celebrates Idaho’s official state fruit, which also happens to be a favorite of bears! Although Idaho is largely associated with the potato, the root vegetable is primarily grown in the southern and southeastern parts of the state. In the high-elevation forests of Idaho’s northern panhandle, where the Great American journeys across on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes (friendsofcdatrails.org), the huckleberry is more common. Visit a local café or diner here and you’re likely to find the dark purple, blueberry-like fruit served up in pie or ice cream. The region’s annual
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