Winter fun
Great winter festivals
Enjoy the chilly season with snow sculptures, ice castles, sleigh rides and lots of hot chocolate.
True northerners don't let cold weather keep them indoors, not when they could be out on the ice playing broomball and bowling turkeys.
Many festivals in winter are held on frozen lakes, the best place for kite-flying, ice golf and hot-air balloon lift-offs. In northern Minnesota, an ice-house city goes up on Leech Lake for the goofy Eelpout Festival in February.
In parks, elaborate ice and snow sculptures entertain passersby. On rivers, buses take tourists to see bald eagles. Bonfires
and hot chocolate are offered everywhere.
The coolest days of winter
Ditch the indoors for one of these great festivals.
There's no use hiding from winter — it lasts too long, and eventually that living room will get old.
Many of the tourist spots we love to visit in summer work hard to lure us back when it's cold, offering festivals with lots of fun in the snow, plus bonfires and chili feeds to warm us up afterward.
For a spectacular spectator event, watch the start of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Duluth or international ski-jumpers in Westby, Wis., or Iron Mountain, Mich. To join in yourself, try Madison's Winter Festival or Winter Tracks on the Gunflint Trail and North Shore.
Chasing the Beargrease
On the North Shore, the grueling sled-dog race enthralls onlookers.
Long before reality shows turned survival into a stunt, there was John Beargrease.
With no fanfare and no road, the Ojibwe man delivered the weekly mail between Two Harbors and Grand Marais until 1899, using a dog team in winter. Using only four dogs to pull packs of up to 700 pounds, Beargrease could make the round-trip in a few days.
His stamina spawned a legend. For 29 years, mushers from around the nation have come to trace his path, racing each other from Duluth to the Gunflint Trail in the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon.
Seeking an outdoor hot tub
It's just the thing on a cold winter day, but only a few resorts and inns have one.
In winter, there's nothing better than relaxing in a hot tub after a day outdoors.
Hot tubs are a dime a dozen — inside B&Bs and hotels. But the ones outside? Much harder to find.
Ice capers
Along rivers and lakes, it's fun to play with Jack Frost.
In winter, ice comes with the territory. You can curse it — or you can play with it.
Kids know how. Climbers and skaters know how. And photographers adore it.
Having fun with ice also is a good way to cope with a winter that drags on, endlessly, into April.
How to make ice luminaries
With homemade lanterns, make your front walk glimmer.
In winter, the best time to be out in the forest is during a candlelight ski in state parks and forests, when volunteers set out hundreds of luminaries along snow-draped trails.
It's always a magical occasion (for more, see Ski or snowshoe by
candlelight).
If you'd like to have the same effect all winter long, make some ice luminaries for your own walk. It'll impress visitors as well as put some sparkle into the long winter nights.
Best of winter
Here are 20 things that will make you fall in love with snow season.
When we were kids, we liked winter. Remember?
We built snow forts and made snow angels. We caught snowflakes on our tongues and took flying leaps on patches of ice.
We had fun. What happened?
Playground in the woods
At Deep Portage, adults take a tip from the kids.
As adults, we sometimes forget how great it is to be a kid.
People give you toys to play with. They show you new games and explain things in interesting ways. They feed you freshly baked cookies and s'mores.
Kids take it for granted. But I didn't one January, when I got to stay at Deep Portage Learning Center, in the woods north of Brainerd.
Gooseberries on ice
In winter, the beloved North Shore waterfalls turn into a big, frozen playground.
There's one spot along the North Shore at which everyone has to stop.
Its five falls tumble over lumpy floes of ancient lava, filling the air with mist and tumult. Intriguing crannies, created by jagged walls of rock and twisted cedars, turn adults into compulsive shutterbugs and bring out the Indiana Jones in children, who clamber from one precipice to another.
This is Gooseberry Falls State Park, the most-visited state park in Minnesota outside of Fort Snelling.
Staying snug in winter
If you know what to wear, dealing with cold weather is a breeze.
In this chilly region, smart men are on to Victoria's Secret.
Shopping at the mall, they breeze right by the silk nighties, the gold bracelets, the dainty perfumes. Because what Victoria secretly wants for Christmas are SmartWool undies, a goose-down parka and moosehide mukluks.
When I was a newcomer to Minnesota, my boyfriend was a smart man. Our first Christmas, he gave me a bulky down parka that
made me look like the Michelin man.
Cheap winter getaways
Here are 15 places where a fun weekend costs $100 or less.
In the Upper Midwest, we tend not to brag — except when we find a great bargain.
My, do we love our bargains. We love them even when times are good. But now that they're bad, we need them, especially when
cabin fever strikes in winter.
One of our favorite winter getaways is the Sports Dorm at Giants Ridge alpine ski resort on Minnesota's Iron Range. It costs less than $20 per person to stay there, but it's only yards from a chairlift.
Serenity at Naniboujou
On Minnesota's North Shore, a Jazz Age lodge still inspires reverence.
During the heady days of the Roaring Twenties, a group of Duluth businessmen conceived a plan.
They would buy 3,300 acres of land along Lake Superior and on both sides of the Arrowhead River, encompassing beach,
waterfalls and rocky gorges. They’d buy another 8,000 acres inland, where caribou still roamed and lakes were thick
with fish and fowl.
They’d build a clubhouse, with tennis courts and golf course and swimming pool. And they’d name the whole thing for Naniboujou, the powerful but benevolent Ojibwe spirit who claimed this northern wilderness as his own.
Snow asylum
In northeast Wisconsin, Afterglow Resort stays on top of the heap.
In the wilds of northeast Wisconsin, winter always looks like winter.
It's the kind with snow — snow that comes early, stays late and blankets the forest in heaps, supplying reliable skiing and snowshoeing to people from less-blessed locales.
But in 2003, the heaps of snow didn't come there or virtually anywhere, and skiers were desperate. So was Pete Moline, who
runs Afterglow Resort on a lake near the Michigan border.
Ice caves of the Apostles
Near Cornucopia, people wait for the window into a crystalline world to open.
Along the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin, everyone waits for a big freeze.
Only when temperatures stay low for a long time will the edges of Lake Superior freeze enough for people to walk out to the mainland ice caves, whose beauty is renowned.
Even when ice is sufficiently solid, wind may suddenly split it, and snow may block the access drive. So when park rangers say it’s okay to go — well, then you’d better go.
Near escapes in Minnesota
Skiing or skyways? Here are 10 places for a great winter getaway.
Before Valentine’s Day, and as winter drags on, everyone starts thinking about romantic getaways.
Well, we already have a story about romantic places to stay, and beyond that, who can say what romance is?
Especially since “romantic’’ often is code for “expensive.’’ We think romance has very little relationship to expenditure; we’ve found it in tents and camper cabins as well as luxurious inns. It’s everywhere, if you look for it.
Winter weekend in Monticello
Come for the swans; stay for the shopping and skiing.
Not far west of the Twin Cities, the Mississippi River town of Monticello is known for two things.
Passersby on I-94 can't fail to notice the nuclear-power reactor that marks the town. In winter, it's the power plant that attracts a flock of trumpeter swans, which thinks the plant's warm discharge waters are a little spa just for them (for more, see Snow birds).
Of course, the flock of swans draws a flock of swan-watchers. One January, my husband and I were among them, standing along the shore of the river and marveling at the raucous crowd of hundreds of birds, jostling for food and attention.
Near escapes in Wisconsin
Water parks or waterfalls? Here are 10 places to go for a great winter getaway.
When winter seems to be lasting forever, you just want to get away.
Of course, that’s not so easy to do if you’re buried in snow. Then you may have to get away a lot closer . . . maybe to the hotel around the corner.
Until then, here are some great winter getaways, each with lots to do and see.
Dog days of winter
Deep in a forest, novice mushers tag along with some huskies.
In the north woods, it's easy to fall in love with sled dogs.
They're exuberant and adorable but also focused, intense and explosive — sort of like kindergartners crossed with Olympic athletes.
For huskies, life is simple: They live to run. Anyone who has watched the start of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon has
witnessed the drive of a husky, a four-legged Ferrari that snaps into warp speed at the rustle of a harness.
© Beth Gauper, 2007 - 2012 all rights reserved
