![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
Madison has the state Capitol, the largest university, two big lakes and all kinds of attitude. There's plenty to do if you want to stay put. But sometimes, you just have to hit the road and explore.
Madison is surrounded by great candidates for a day trip — or a mini-vacation, if you prefer. It’s got cheese
country to the south, Old World towns to the west, bicycle trails on three sides and good eating all around.
Here are some great ways to spend a day in south-central Wisconsin. If you get out the door early, do lots of stuff and stay late, it really will feel like a vacation.
If you're taking a so-called staycation this year, don't stay too close to home. From the Twin Cities, you only have to drive an hour or so to find a world of fun.
Minneapolis and St. Paul grew around the confluence of two rivers, and their favorite day-trip destinations are on rivers, too. To the southeast, the port of Red Wing is curled into an elbow of the Mississippi. To the east, Stillwater and its shops unfurl along the St. Croix.
To the north, St. Croix Falls is a hub for hiking, paddling and bicycling. To the south, historic Northfield straddles the Cannon River.
Fall is made for festivals. It's harvest time, and the fields and orchards are overflowing. Trees turn red and gold. And it's the last time we'll enjoy warm weather until spring.
The many people who heed the urge to get out and about on crisp autumn weekends make it the busiest tourist season of the year. Any town that can hold a fall festival does, and well-established ones, such as Bayfield's Apple Festival (see Big apples), become almost too popular.
"Apple Fest is an anomaly; it's not what Bayfield is like the other 364 days of the year," says Mary Motiff of Bayfield's Chamber of Commerce. "There are two kinds of people: those who love Apple Fest and those who want to avoid it at all costs. "
On the western fringes of the Twin Cities, the wealthy have staked out Lake Minnetonka.
Nearly all of its 125 miles of shoreline are privately owned, and the summer cottages built by vacationing flour millers and
businessmen — Pillsbury, Northrop, Bell, Loring, Peavey — have morphed into mansions.
But on the southeast corner of the sprawling lake, one town retains vestiges of the Victorian age, when steamboats ferried vacationers around the lake and day-trippers arrived on electric streetcars.
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.
As wooded shorelines erupt in fall colors, narrated river cruises become especially popular. That's easy to understand — why not kick back and let the scenery come to you?
On the most scenic part of the Mississippi, a steam-powered paddlewheeler cruises past 500-foot bluffs and river towns filled
with history, and pontoons glide into backwaters. In the northwoods, a pontoon explores a wild part of the Wisconsin River. And
sandstone formations on the Dalles and in the Dells give passengers on paddlewheelers, launches and Ducks plenty to look
at.
Here are some of the best tours.
Walking around Lindström, it's not hard to guess where the area's first settlers came from.
If the multitude of umlauts don't give it away, the herds of Dala horses and straw goats will. Factor in the giant white coffee pot in the sky, and you can be pretty sure this is Swedish country.
In the 1850s, poor Swedes came pouring into the lakes country west of Taylors Falls. It wasn't the best farmland, but it was cheap, and it looked like Sweden — lots of water, lots of trees and, unfortunately, lots of rocks. Still, it seemed like heaven to the peasants, and the letters they sent home brought more Swedes.