![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
In the Upper Midwest, travel can be competitive.
Many events are so big and so fun that everyone wants to go. If you want to go, too, you'll have to act fast to stay ahead of the crowds.
Start thinking about summer lodgings at the start of the year. At Custer State Park in the Black Hills, campsite reservations for the entire season open Jan. 2.
Wouldn't it be great to spend a year enjoying yourself in the 12 best possible places?
Broadcast journalist Charles Kuralt once gave himself that dream assignment: Spend one month apiece in your favorite places in the United States, "at just the right time of the year.''
He devoted July to Ely, the northern-Minnesota gateway to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area.
Patricia Schultz’s best-selling book “1,000 Places to See Before You Die’’ was grand entertainment for armchair travelers. It’s unlikely that many people read the book, then ran off to raft the Mangoky River in Madagascar or bask on the beaches of Bora Bora. But she let us dream about it.
The New York writer's next book, however, was about places to which people might actually go — and about places they
know. It's called “1,000 Places to See in the U.S. and Canada Before You Die.''
She couldn’t visit every place she chose, so she relied on the help of friends and relatives, other travel writers, the Internet and tourism bureaus.
You probably think summer is a time to relax and enjoy the nice weather.
Wrong! It's the time to pick up the pace and make up for the months we sat around thinking about what we could be doing — hiking, biking, camping — if only we lived in Arizona or Florida.
By May, those places are sweatboxes and our time in the sun has arrived. We’ve got Lake Superior at our doorstep, rivers and lakes everywhere and the best bicycle trails in the nation. So go!
Some nifty little towns just haven't made the A list — or any list, so far (See Chasing the Top 10).
That means now is a good time to explore them, before the other tourists flock in.
Tops on this list is Viroqua, a southwest Wisconsin town that caught the eye of
expatriates from Madison long ago but recently has become more tourist-friendly with the opening of Main Street Station. This
indoor public market houses a cafe, organic ice-cream parlor, shops and the Greenman Music Hall, which holds regular concerts
and events.
When it comes to small towns, there really is such a thing as love at first sight.
In 2000, Joy Gieseke was traveling to Madison from her economic-development job in Kansas when she stopped for a few hours in Mineral Point, Wis. She went about her business, but eight months later, she started looking for a job there, found the chamber position open and grabbed it.
"I don't know why Mineral Point hit me so hard," Gieseke says. "I had never heard about it before, but I stumbled across it and couldn't get it out of my mind. I've stumbled across a lot of little towns and just thought, well, that was cute.
As if we didn’t have enough pressures in our lives, now we have “1,000 Places to See in U.S. and Canada Before You Die'' as well as the best-selling "1,000 Places to See Before You Die.’
I've been to some of the places listed in those books, but I'll never see them all in my lifetime. I’ll have a fine time reading about them, though. Then I’ll toss some clothes in a bag and be perfectly happy on my orbits around Lake Superior and the Mississippi.
Our own back yard, while not particularly glamorous, contains some wonderful places, and you actually have a good chance of
seeing them all in your lifetime.
The first times I went up to Minnesota’s North Shore, I did the same thing everyone else does: See Gooseberry Falls. Take pictures of Split Rock Lighthouse. Hike Oberg Mountain.
That’s North Shore 101.
Like most tourists, I rushed right through Two Harbors, completely missing its lighthouse and ore docks. I spent a lot of time
watching boats on Duluth’s Canal Park but didn’t make it up to Skyline Parkway.
Sure, winters can be rough here in wind-chill country. But why do we tough it out? For the big payoff of autumn, of course, with its crisp, sunny days and the luminous orange of the sugar maple, the scarlet of sumac, the golden popple and bronzed oak.
They don't have that in Florida and Arizona. But here, we've got it all: a bright palette of colors, harvest festivals and nifty little towns to explore.
Fall is the time to be out and about. In Minnesota, the state scenic byways are a good bet, as are Wisconsin's Rustic Roads. Here are seven other routes that will put you in the middle of the scenery. And if fall color doesn't materialize when you expect it to, don't worry: These drives are pretty great any time.
There are certain towns that are so adorable and have so much that appeals to tourists that you just have to call them show
towns.
They're real towns, of course, but they're always on their best behavior because tourists are always watching, and many have evolved in lockstep with tourism.
There's no question about what goes on the top of this list — Galena, Ill. This 1850s lead-mining boom town snoozed for a century before it was
rediscovered and turned into a playground for weekenders, especially from Chicago.
On Top 10 lists, nothing breeds success like success.
A little town that's anointed one of America's Loveliest Villages in a book one year is likely to be a magazine's Best Getaway the next and a newspaper's Great Escape the year after that.
Usually, the designation falls out of the sky, like pennies from heaven.
