Traveling author visits Vergas, Frazee, Wolf Lake

By Robert Williams

Editor

Traveler and author Seth Varner, owner of Wandermore Publishing LLC and creator of the popular Facebook page Wandermore in Minnesota, made a stop in Vergas, Wolf Lake and Frazee on Monday, May 5, as part of  his quest to visit every incorporated community in Minnesota this year.  ¶  Varner documents town history through his writings and photographs, learns more about local communities, and encourages the expansion of small town tourism. He creates a book out of each of the states he travels to serve as a travel guide, history book and living photo album all-in-one.  ¶  He is the only person in history to have visited every incorporated community in five states: his home state of Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and North Dakota, prior to Minnesota.  ¶  “I average about seven, eight, nine towns per day, depending on their size,” Varner said. “I pick a region, pick out those towns and throw it up on Facebook for suggestions.” 

On his day trip through the area he ended up spending seven hours in Detroit Lakes, mainly in part of finishing the quest to see all six trolls. Upon arriving for his interview in Frazee, he was red-faced and perspiring from finishing the troll quest visiting Jacob Everear at Wannigan Regional Park. 

“That’s why I was behind schedule,” he said. “I just spent too much time there.”

A favorite part of his many road trips is finding the oddities, like the many world’s largest statues located in Minnesota.

“That’s one of my favorite things; I actively seek those out,” he said. 

“It’s funny how they’re so centralized, particularly Otter Tail County, you’ve got the Otter, the Turkey here, the Loon,” Varner said.

Varner was even aware about the World’s Largest Loon now residing in St. Paul outside Allianz Field.

“I can’t believe they did that,” he said. “I was actually upset reading that article. Of all the things you could have chosen, you stole that claim to fame. Now Vergas has to build one four times bigger.”

Fans may notice Varner often takes unusual paths between stops and that is because he has found a way to maximize efficiency while on the road.

“Sometimes it might not seem to make a lot of sense but technically that’s the fastest route,” he said. “Have you ever thought about how FedEx, UPS or Amazon plan their package routes? I found their software. I plan my itinerary and I get the order of the towns from that routing software. I plug in every town and some state parks and out-of-the-way things and it finds the fastest possible route between all those places. I could do up to 1,000 places.”

He completed his first Minnesota road trip in February and currently travels back-and-forth to where he lives, Omaha, Nebraska, completing the task of visiting the entire state in shifts.

Varner loves to celebrate the smallest towns and his interactions are often the biggest thing to happen in those towns in years.

“That’s part of why I do what I do,” he said. “Some of these towns, Wolf Lake, for example. When was the last time anyone from out-of-state purposely went there, is going to write something about the town, and publish it?”

Creating his own publishing company came about because of the pandemic in March of 2020. He was 19 and a freshman at the University of Nebraska-Omaha when campus closed and he was forced to move back to his parent’s home. 

That’s where he got the idea to visit every town in Nebraska and the rest is history, including college, as he made his own career happen on the road.

“It’s so much driving and I’ll take over 100,000 pictures before this is all done,” he said. “For a kid who was writing books about his cat, loved traveling and taking photos at a young age, and always took an interest in geography and history, it seems like Wandermore Publishing would’ve come to fruition at one point or another. Maybe it’s easy to say that now that COVID is largely a thing of the past, but without that pandemic, who knows if I would have ever had the intention to ‘wander more’ and learn more about Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, the Dakotas, and all the little farm towns of the Midwest.”

Fans interested in the Minnesota book can set a reminder on Seth’s website www.wandermorepublishing.com/ and also order and browse his five other books. For daily updates on his ongoing travels around Minnesota visit facebook.com/WandermoreMinnesota/