In the Middle of Somewhere
At Atlas Obscura, our team trips aren't retreats—they're Advances. Where are you? Two friends texted, separately, within an hour of each other. Western Nebraska, I said. So you're in the middle of nowhere, both of them wrote back. I really paused. I had flown into Denver and taken a nine-seater plane to Alliance: a tiny plane, a tiny airport, a tiny place. And just before the texts came in, I had been looking at the Atlas Obscura map and counted eight other places within a ninety-minute drive that I wanted to go to. I was bummed that I didn't have time to stay. So I texted my friends back: No, I'm in the middle of somewhere. One week later I was in the northwest corner of Alabama, where the Tennessee River bends, and I told that story to my Atlas Obscura colleagues on the first morning of our company offsite in Florence. Most of them had never been to Alabama before. We had built the tri
