![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
Blooming dogwood and hawthorn, robins hopping around on new grass, beds of daffodils lining country lanes. Sound good? Then head for southeast Missouri, where frozen northerners will find spring in all its glory
When to go: From late March through April, most days are sunny and around 70 (though they also can be cold and rainy). In May, crowds from St. Louis and Kansas City start arriving.
What to do: Paddle the Jacks Fork and Current rivers, part of Ozark National Scenic Riverways, the first national park to protect a wild river system.
See the 1894 Alley Spring Mill near Eminence (pictured). Stand in the shadow of 680-ton Dumbo in Elephant Rocks State Park. Gaze into the Deep Hole in Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park. Climb Missouri's highest point in Taum Sauk Mountain State Park.
Events to catch: March 20-21, the Missouri Whitewater Championships on the St. Francis River.
Where to stay: For families, the YMCA's Trout Lodge near Potosi; it offers spring-break rates through April. On the Black River in rural Lesterville, the Wilderness Lodge.
Details: See Floating Missouri and On the rocks in the Ozarks.
Past fast plans: Birds in the bluffs, Gunflint prime time, Fast times in Wausau, Baseball in Milwaukee, Itasca in winter
Canoecopia in Madison. It's the world's largest paddle sports expo, according to host Rutabaga. Bike-O-Rama, with discounts on bicycles and gear, is next door. At Alliant Energy Center. For more, see Crazy about kayaks. March 12-14.
Celtic Festival in Moorhead, Minn. This free festival at the Hjemkomst Center includes two entertainment stages, arts and crafts, interactive booths and Celtic food and treats. March 13.
Mush for a Cure on the Gunflint Trail in Minnesota. The mushing is canceled for this event on Gunflint Lake, due to poor snow conditions, but the party will go on. Everyone's wearing pink, including the dogs. March 13.
St. Patrick's Day Parade and Celebration in Crosslake, Minn. Head up to this Brainerd Lakes playground for hot-air balloon tether rides, live music and a big 2 p.m. parade. March 13.
Everyone wants to be green this year, right? Here are some good ways to do it over St. Patrick's Day in 2010. And if you miss the big day, four Irish inns are green all year-round.
Great parades: In traditionally Irish St. Paul, the annual noon parade runs along Fourth Street to Rice Park on March 17; the parade in Madison is at 1:30 p.m. March 14 and runs from Capitol Square.
In Chicago, they really do dye the river green. Watch the dye job at 10:45 p.m. March 13 from Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, then watch the noon St. Pat's Day parade through Grant Park.
In Milwaukee, the big St. Pat's parade starts at noon March 13, starting at Third and Wisconsin downtown and followed by music, dancing and pipes and drums at the Irish Cultural and Heritage Center.
Even if it looks like winter outside, you can count on maple trees to know otherwise.
In late February, their sap starts to run, and that's "the sweet good-bye of winter,'' writes naturalist John Burroughs.
In the awkward time
between winter and spring, the promise of maple syrup also gives people
a good reason to get outdoors and into the woods.
Festivals across the region offer tours of the sugarbush, nature walks and, often, music and games in addition to tapping tutorials and pancake breakfasts with syrup.
In Minnesota, five state parks offer make-your-own programs. Here are some of the best events in 2010.
If the flapping of giant sails makes your heart flutter, this is your summer to be on the Great Lakes.
The Denis Sullivan of Milwaukee’s Discovery Center is leading an armada of international schooners, barks and sloops on a race through the Great Lakes, from Toronto on Lake Ontario to Cleveland on Lake Erie, Bay City on Lake Huron, Chicago and Green Bay on Lake Michigan and Duluth on Lake Superior.
The Great Lakes United Tall Ships Challenge 2010 will promote freshwater conservation and youth sail training along the way. But the crowds gathered in ports along the way mostly will want to see the spectacle of hundreds of sails flapping over historic vessels rarely seen on the Great Lakes.
They include the Amistad, a 129-foot replica of the schooner on which kidnapped Africans launched a revolt in 1839 that later became the basis for the Spielberg movie; the Europa, an 185-foot Dutch bark that was built in 1911 by the city of Hamburg, Germany, as a floating lighthouse on the Elbe River; and the 165-foot German brig Roald Amundsen, which once served the East German Army and sports 18 sails.
In summer, only the foolhardy travel without reservations.
Big events can eat up every room and campsite in an entire region, especially if the event is in a small town.
In central Iowa, more than 100,000 people go to Pella Tulip Time May 6-8 (pictured), which the American Bus Association regularly chooses as one of the Top 100 Events in North America.
No summer vacation is more fun than a Circle Tour of one of the Great Lakes — and nothing is more of a pain than planning one.
This year, I’m planning to cabin-camp my way around Lake Michigan, which is lined by state parks with gorgeous stretches of sand and dunes. You can’t buy a better beach vacation at any price, but you have to plan ahead.
Planning is tricky because you pass through four states, 30 state parks and two big metropolitan areas, each of which floods beaches with hordes of sun-worshippers on weekends.
You have to navigate around big festivals that fill every hotel and campground within 50 miles — if you arrive in Traverse City without a reservation during National Cherry Festival, for example, you’ll be sleeping in your car.
Nearly every desirable place in tourist areas has a two-night minimum on weekends, so you’ll either be spending two nights or staying in a Super 8. And you can’t count on getting walk-up campsites: In Michigan, the most popular beach parks are 100 percent reservable.
The good news is that it’s not too late to claim your place in the sun.
Many of the Michigan mini-cabins, rustic cabins and camper cabins that line this Midwestern Riviera still are available for midweek stays in summer, and a few have weekend openings.
In Wisconsin, a brand-new campground opens May 5 in Harrington Beach State Park, and it has plenty of tent sites open for weekends in July and August.
Not all the beach camping in the Upper Midwest is in a state park or even in the countryside.
In the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, Three Rivers Park District offers camping and camper cabins on lakes in three park reserves. They’re a great deal for visitors and also for locals who want to save gas money and travel time.
Reservations open for the season at 8 a.m. Monday, March 15, and holiday weekends will fill in the first few hours. They're phone-only; call 763-559-6700.
The campsites at Baker Park Reserve in Maple Plain, near the beach on Lake Independence, are most popular. The campground includes four camper cabins with screened porches; three sleep six and one is accessible and sleeps five. They’re $50.
If you’ve always wanted a second home – or a third, or a fourth – now is the time to acquire one, at least for a weekend.
People who snapped up beach houses and country retreats during the real-estate boom now are renting them out, trying to pay the mortgage. But renting a vacation house straight from the owner was popular even before the bust: Why not see how the other half lives?
Browsing the pages of HomeAway and Vacation Rentals by Owner – VRBO, the biggest and best-known listing service – is like going on the Parade of Homes, except you get to stay in the house you like best.
Each place looks more appealing than the last – the Lake Geneva cottage with the white picket fence, the 1920s log lodge in Hayward built by a gangster, the condo in the Chicago skyscraper.
True, you won’t know exactly what you’re getting, and it’s not like a hotel, where you can ask for another room if you don’t like the one you get. But the surprise is part of the fun, and you're almost certain to get a good deal.
Even in a dismal economy, there's no need to stay home.
If you're on a budget, you'll have to look beyond fancy resorts, spas and bistros. Try the western Minneapolis suburbs, where you can rent a cabin for eight for $115, firewood included.
Watch prairie chickens courting on the central Wisconsin sand plains or go up north to Ely for a spring paddle. Ride a zip line at a Missouri camp or go bicycling on the Munger Trail from a lodge in eastern Minnesota.
Each weekend costs $100 or less per person, based on double occupancy. Here are 12 great spring trips for 2010.
When we’re stressed out, a lot of us think: Gotta go to a spa.
Not a day spa, where you’re anointed, kneaded and tossed back into the cold. No, a destination spa, where you lounge around in white robes and relax until you’re half paralyzed.
Not many of us can afford that kind of spa . . . unless it’s in Paul Bunyan land.
Set deep in the woods outside the old logging town of Rhinelander, Woodwind Health Spa is a spa for the fleece-and-flannel set. Nothing is fussy – not the food, not the service and especially not the prices.
“We keep it affordable, so that the people who need it the most can come,’’ says owner Marj Champney.
Champney is a folksy, plain-spoken woman who found her way to Wisconsin after working as a hotel chef, corporate inventory specialist and carpenter from Maine to California.
The spa started to take shape the day she was driving along the Wisconsin River and a bald eagle swooped in front of her car. It led her down an overgrown driveway and began circling over the 40-acre property she now owns.
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