June 18, 2015: US 61 still runs through Lancaster, Wisconsin, despite WI 129 being an obvious bypass route. Going through town is a less-straight alignment for 61.
A roadgeek meeting in Madison plus a two-day summer trip offered chances to go after my nearest untraveled significant stretches of US highways in southwest Wisconsin. As part of my trip to the first event, I did US 14 from east of the point it meets US 61 near Viroqua to I-39/90 at Janesville. For the second, I could pick up where that left off.
US 61 in Wisconsin runs through the heart of the Driftless Area, offering lovely scenery from a gently winding two-lane. It exits the state with US 14 at La Crosse. Near the south end, right after it splits from US 151, is the Dickeyville Grotto.
Less than three weeks before that, I drove to Fort Madison to go on the US 61 bypass for the first time since its opening. That’s the second time I’ve had to re-drive part of US 61, the other being its reroute onto I-80 and I-280, and I’ll have to do it again when the four-lane to Grandview is completed. Now the only stoplights along mainline US 61 in Iowa are in Muscatine, Burlington, and Dubuque.
I’ve now been on US 61 from downtown St. Paul to where it leaves I-64 west of downtown St. Louis, and then off and on at points south of there to Memphis.