Learning vacations
Taking another swing
At summer sports camps, grown-ups dust off old skills or learn new ones.
I coulda been a contender.
I played tennis as a kid, teaching myself on the courts near my house, and I played on my high school girls’ tennis team, which, while not very competitive, had an actual coach thanks to Title IX.
But I never took lessons, and after high school, my budding skills slid into disuse. The years passed and I became a has-been, with nothing to look forward to but the senior varsity.
Living in a lighthouse
The first keepers were ready to assist and rescue. Now, volunteers are returning the favor.
Around the Great Lakes, love for lighthouses is unlimited. Often called "America's castles,'' lighthouses are symbols of a more adventurous era, and tourists find them irresistible.
"They work their way up the coast seeing all the lighthouses,'' says Ronda Werner of Michigan's Tawas Point Light.
"They bring their lighthouse book and want stamps in their passports, and they're all decked out in their lighthouse shirts and their little lighthouse earrings. It's wonderful so many people have this much passion for our lighthouses.''
Now they're cooking
For weekenders, rubbing elbows with a real chef is better than TV.
When some folks want to go out for dinner and a show, they make a beeline for Stephen Larson's kitchen.
At his restaurant QUARTER/quarter in the Minnesota bluff-country town of Harmony, the chef and his assistant-wife, "the beautiful and talented Lisa'' Flicker, offer cooking classes that are part magic show, part chemistry lab and part comedy routine.
"Steve and Lisa are the best,'' says frequent guest Carol Beastrom, who runs the Selvig House B&B in Harmony. "They work off each other; they'll make you laugh.''
Language camp for adults
In the woods of northern Minnesota, learners are immersed in world cultures.
It had become a summer tradition: Drive my daughter up north to her German camp at Concordia Language Villages, look enviously around the fabulous campus and whine that adults should get to come, too.
Someone was listening. One day, a flier arrived at my house, announcing the first French and German adult weeks. As it turns out, others had whined, too.
"We've got these millions and millions of dollars' worth of facilities, and we want to use them,'' said Larry Saukko, dean of the Finnish and academic-year German programs.
Slinging cement in Mineral Point
In a historic Wisconsin village, students follow some dusty footprints.
In southwest Wisconsin, it is natural that people gather in Mineral Point to smash plates, snip glass and cover themselves in cement dust.
Not far to the west, a German-born priest built the Dickeyville Grotto from conch shells, china cups, quartz, petrified rocks
and glass.
Just to the east, an Austrian-born cheesemaker encrusted his house with glass "jewels'' and filled his yard with concrete fairy-tale figures.
Curiosity camp
With fun day trips, the University of Minnesota finds a cure for "vacation-deficit disorder."
If you want to play hooky from work in summer, just tell your boss that the University of Minnesota thinks you should.
Americans are putting in more work hours than at any time since the 1920s, it says, but as many as 30 percent of us don't take a vacation. Yet, research also shows the brain needs time away from the job so it can stretch.
It turns out that all work and no play really does make Jack a dull boy. That's why the College of Continuing Education offers summer Curiosity Camps, with nearly two dozen chances for people to take a day off.
Whitewater 101
On the Wolf River in northeast Wisconsin, novice kayakers learn the moves at Bear Paw resort.
Whitewater paddlers are, by definition, thrill-seekers.
That's why they seek out the northeast corner of Wisconsin, "the cradle of rivers.'' The big Wisconsin River starts there, as do the Wolf, Peshtigo and Menominee, three of the Upper Midwest's best-known whitewater rivers.
On the Wolf River, Bear Paw Outdoor Adventure Resort has been a whitewater hub since 1994, selling gear to expert wranglers and teaching novices how to handle the rapids, which froth and churn over knots of boulders dropped by the last glacier.
Schools of know-how
In resort areas, many people go home from vacation with a new skill.
In hindsight, it's good to be grown up and out of school: no more tests, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks.
But it's also good to be a grown-up who's back in school, because schools have grown up, too. There are no tests and few books, and teachers are as friendly and attentive as cruise-ship hosts.
In fact, attending some schools is a lot like being on vacation.
Volunteer vacations
Sign up to work in a lighthouse, study wolves or join the fur trade.
Around Lake Superior, you have to act fast to reserve a vacation mowing lawns or combing the ground for bones.
It may not sound glamorous, but the lawns are at lighthouses, and the moose bones are in the backcountry of Isle Royale National Park, where volunteers may be tutored by famous Wolf-Moose Project researchers Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich.
You may not get to take a lot of hot showers, but oh, the stories you’ll tell.
Classroom in the Clearing
In a tranquil Door County forest, students gather to reflect and learn.
In a cedar and pine forest on Lake Michigan, moments of illumination fly around like sparks off a campfire.
The best way to capture sunrise on film. Handy techniques for depicting shadow in watercolors. How to harness the power of the inner eye.
At the Clearing in Door County, everything becomes clearer.
© Beth Gauper, 2007 - 2012 all rights reserved
