Scenic Hwy-2 meanders and dips for over 330 miles from I-80 to South Dakota's Black Hills. It passes through the Sandhills - a mesmerizing landscape carpeted with short-grass prairie and softened by delicate wild flowers and shiny ponds. Apart from a few farmsteads, grain silos and tiny churches, all you're likely to see on the open road are lazing cattle, a few sluggish rivers and the occasional mile-and-a-quarter-long freight train weaving its way through the hills. It's a long, desolate, yet incredibly beautiful drive through an anachronistic corner of the US, where small towns are all spick-and-span and everyone could well know each other's name; Broken Bow , 77 miles north of I-80, features one of the neatest town squares in the heartland.

The road dawdles for another 200 miles through scattered villages before drifting into ALLIANCE - a nice enough little prairie town, which pulls in over 50,000 visitors per year for its one big attraction. Carhenge , two and a half miles north on State Hwy-87, is a rough copy of Stonehenge, made with old cars rather than stone. Erected in a cornfield during a family reunion in 1987, this intriguing collection of Chevys, Cadillacs and Plymouths, painted a brooding battleship grey and tilted at unusual angles, has to be the best picnic site in America's heartland. To some it's an ingenious piece of Pop Art; others view it as great black humor, or an appalling eyesore. After it was built, a few fundamentalist Christians feared it was a Satanic shrine. Certainly, the Nebraska Department of Roads saw nothing amusing about the project. They rapidly declared it a junkyard, and ordered the city of Alliance to remove it, forcing locals to form Friends of Carhenge , whose work seems to have secured the monument's future (always open; free).

The helpful downtown CVB office, 124 W Third St (tel 308/762-1520) provides information and sells Carhenge souvenirs. There is no reason to linger in Alliance, but if you arrive late, try the Days Inn , 117 Cody Ave, just off Third Street (tel 308/762-8000; $50-75), or the Super 8 , 1419 W Third St (tel 308/762-8300; $35-50). For food , there's Ken & Dale's , 123 E Third St (tel 308/762-7252), which serves succulent all-day breakfasts and great pecan pancakes.

Scenic Hwy-2 and Alliance

• Scenic Hwy-2 and Alliance

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