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When heat wraps itself around your shoulders like an electric blanket with static cling, there’s only one thing to do: Look for cold water.
You'll find it tubing on a spring-fed river, such as the South Branch of the Root River, which takes a short cut through Mystery Caverns and heads toward Lanesboro chilled to 48 degrees.
On Minnesota's North Shore, plop yourself into one of the Baptism River’s potholes and let the cool waters swirl around you. Or go whitewater rafting on the St. Louis River south of Duluth — a fast cool-down is guaranteed.
In Clear Lake, the spirit of the 1950s didn't die with Buddy Holly.
This northern Iowa lake town, midway between the Twin Cities and Des Moines, swells with vacationers in summer but retains the laid-back, carefree air of decades past.
On the shores of the lake, classic cars cruise around pocket-sized City Park, fuzzy pink dice dangling from mirrors. Every Saturday and Sunday, the municipal band plays in the bandshell. The Lions Club grills chicken and sweet corn, and a paddlewheeler takes tourists on cruises.
Around here, you don't need oceans for a beach vacation.
We have thousands of lakes, plus inland seas on shoreline that often is called the Fourth Coast. Lake Michigan's shores are a veritable Riviera, and even rocky Superior has some noteworthy stretches of sand.
You could throw a dart at the map and come up with a good beach. Or you could take a cue from names of state parks — Point Beach and Harrington Beach in Wisconsin, McCarthy Beach in Minnesota, Orchard Beach in Michigan.
For a hamlet out in nowhere, Lanesboro is picturesquely blessed.
It’s hemmed in by tall limestone bluffs, circled by a spring-fed trout stream and bisected by one of the nation’s best bicycle trails. Eagles, herons and egrets cruise along the scenic river just to the north, alongside canoeists and kayakers.
Nineteenth-century brick storefronts line downtown, which won a Great American Main Street award from the National Trust for
Historical Preservation in 1998; Lanesboro still is the only Minnesota town that has earned the honor.
Once, a wind-whipped sand spit was not the most desirable address in Duluth.
The Ojibwe preferred the lush estuary of the St. Louis River, which flows into Lake Superior at what today is Duluth-Superior Harbor. The French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, for whom the city was named, didn’t waste much time on the lakefront when he arrived in 1679. Nor did the early fur traders, who hustled straight up the St. Louis, which, via the little Savanna River, connects Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
The St. Louis looks sleepy, but it's the largest Lake Superior tributary in the United States. With Ontario's Nipigon River, it contributes about one-fourth of the lake's annual water input.
For a long time, people in Superior, Wis., observed mostly Scandinavian traditions.
And then the dragons arrived.
In China, the works of poet Qu Yuan inspired dragon-boat races, which are held worldwide and have been popular in Canada for many years.
To hear resort owners in the north woods tell it, Brainerd is the Times Square of Minnesota.
“It’s crazy down there,’’ they say, shaking their heads. “It’s a zoo. We don’t want to be like Brainerd.’’
In Wisconsin, people talk the same way about Door County. Those places are busy, all right. They’re busy because plenty of people like that kind of atmosphere — the restaurants, the golf, the shopping, the fancy condo resorts.
It’s almost magic, the power of wind and water on a hot day. It's enough to give you goosebumps.
Tubing Minnesota's Rum River on an oppressively hot afternoon, I was amazed to see goose flesh rise on my legs when a breeze sprang up and a cloud crossed the sun. We’d entered a microclimate that seemed to exist only along the river’s surface.
“I don't even feel the heat here,” said my friend Adele. “You'd never guess it was 95.”
In 1896, a St. Paul man named J.A. Berkey came to Minnesota's Leech Lake, threw out his line and reeled in a whole new industry.
"He set up white tents for some men from Kansas City, who fished their guts out and said, 'We’re going back and telling everyone,’ ’’ said Renee Geving, director of the Cass County Museum.
The hook was set. Over the years, Leech Lake’s reputation as a fishing hole grew as big as its muskies, which can be huge. The town that grew on the shores, however, wasn’t called Berkey, or even McGarry, after the town founder, a resort owner who is credited with coining the slogan "Land of 10,000 Lakes.’’
Up north, there's a lake cabin with my name on it.
I don't own it, and I never will. But for a week in July, it's mine.
Only a generation ago, most middle-class folks in this area could think of nothing better than renting a little housekeeping cabin on a lake.
In the Upper Midwest, there's nothing better than a week at the lake.
Lazy afternoons on the beach, boat rides, marshmallow roasts, catching strings of sunnies — it's pure essence of summer.
But summer — or vacation, anyway — doesn't last long. And while there's nothing better than a week on a lake, a few days can be just as good.
In Kandiyohi County, it's thanks to the last Ice Age that life's a beach today.
Near Willmar, a lobe of the last glacier came to a grinding halt 12,000 years ago, dumping massive blocks of ice that made big dents in the ground.
Now, they're lakes, popping up like mirages at the edge of soybean fields, behind screens of ash and cottonwoods. Farther north, they're hidden amid rocky meadows and rolling hillocks full of glacial rubble.
After years of traveling around this region, I can answer nearly every travel question except one: “Can you give me the name of a good lake resort?’’
No, I can’t. Only you and your therapist know what you consider a good lake resort.
Staying at a Minnesota lake resort is not like staying at a Marriott. There may be chipmunks living under your cabin, and fish that nibble your legs when you wade. Squealing children may run past your window while you’re trying to read.