![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
In southeast Minnesota, some of the locals stand out a bit.
They travel in horse-drawn buggies, they dress only in dark colors and they speak an archaic German dialect. In their homes and workshops, they refuse to use electricity, natural gas or plumbing, all of which would literally connect them to the outside world.
They're Old Order Amish, direct descendants of a Swiss religious group that believed Martin Luther and other Reformation leaders didn't go far enough in returning the church to strict Scripture.
There's something inspiring about a certain pocket of northeast Iowa.
It's nurtured a a beloved children's-book author, a famous composer and two brilliant woodcarvers. It's stirred battalions of people who create art, preserve heirloom seed and carry on Norwegian culture.
There are a lot of stories in these hills and valleys on the edge of the Driftless Area, which escaped the flattening effects of the glaciers.
Of all the immigrant groups, Norwegians perhaps are most sentimental.
They settled in hills and valleys reminiscent of their homeland, bringing trunks full of handcrafted ale bowls and mangle boards. Generations later, they’re still painting bowls and stitching costumes in the old style and celebrating holidays with foods poor Norwegians ate in the 19th century.
The heart of this nostalgia is Decorah, a town of 8,500 tucked into the wooded ridges and limestone bluffs of northeast Iowa. It's the home of Luther College, established by Norwegians in 1861, and Vesterheim, founded in 1877 and now the nation's most comprehensive museum dedicated to a single ethnic group.
First, an elf sashayed down the street.
Behind him marched adults in bunads, the traditional Norwegian folk costume, and two shaggy little boys wearing the long noses, beards and tails of trolls.
Baton twirlers, roller-limbo skaters, polka dancers, folk dancers, fiddlers, buglers and queens of all kinds followed, lobbing torrents of Tootsie Rolls and hard candy to the crowd along the route. My children thought it was the best parade they'd ever seen.
At first, the southeast Minnesota town of Spring Grove looks like any other town.
There’s a café, an antiques store and a park full of statues. But Spring Grove isn’t ordinary. It’s full of Norwegians.
In the park, two bronze men appear to be squabbling; they’re characters in a nationally syndicated comic strip written by a Spring Grove man 50 years before Neil Simon came up with “The Odd Couple.’’
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. There are no franchises, and farmers still shop in town; in fact, the aroma
of manure still hangs over downtown on Fridays, when the weekly livestock auction is held.
It was a sunny day in southeastern Minnesota, and everywhere I looked, there were Babes.
Babes bombing along bike trails, Babes prowling the shops of Lanesboro, Babes laughing over white wine in the inn where I was staying. They were the Fat Bottom Girls Cycle Club from Des Moines, also known as Babes on Bikes, and they were having a swell time riding the smooth, scenic trails of the Root River Valley.
I took a group photo of them in front of the Jailhouse Inn in Preston and inquired about their name; I didn’t, ahem, see a fat bottom anywhere.
It was a beautiful fall weekend in Lanesboro, and the streets of this picturesque town in Minnesota’s bluff country were packed with sightseers and bicycle tourists.
They were browsing in gift shops. They were sampling at the winery. They were bicycling on the Root River State Trail.
In fall, Lanesboro is the darling of day-trippers and weekenders. My children and I love it, too. They spent 15 minutes with me in Cornucopia Art Gallery, I spent 15 minutes with them in the Indian crafts shop, and then we went in-line skating on the paved trail, across the trestle bridge and along the limestone bluffs.
Before the Root River State Trail was built, the only places to stay in Lanesboro were some small hunters' cabins near the city park.
That was before there was anything to do in the isolated village besides hunt and fish. Now Lanesboro is the recreational and
cultural capital of southeast Minnesota, with a brand-new theater, and arts center and 60 miles of paved bicycle trails.
With visitors pouring in, Lanesboro also has become the bed-and-breakfast capital of the Minnesota, with more B&Bs than any other town, plus several inns.
At harvest time, Minnesota's bluff country overflows with beauty.
Fat pumpkins await buyers at farmers' markets. Golden clumps of wildflowers line bicycle trails. From buggies, the Amish sell homemade baskets, bumbleberry jam and apple butter.
There's an abundance of everything, including tourists.
Like most women who take care of small creatures, Karla Kinstler splits her life into two parts: Before Alice and After Alice.
Before Alice, Kinstler and her husband, Ken, could sleep late, go out on dates and travel whenever they felt like it.
But then little Alice came along. Alice wakes them up at the crack of dawn, sulks if they leave her and leaves messes all over the house. Alice is a spoiled brat, Karla Kinstler admits.
Under the cornstalks of Fillmore County, an unusual sculpture garden sits in shadow.
Stalagmite topiaries line walkways, alongside pale-green flowstone as translucent as Chinese jade. Stalactite statuettes dangle in artistic arrays.
They’re obviously created by a Pollock of rock, a Van Gogh of stone. Yet their genius relies not on the medium — water, applied one drop at a time — but on eons worth of time.
In Rochester, a tourist from the Twin Cities is a novelty.
Tourists from anywhere are a novelty, though patients and medical professionals come from around the world.
“This week, I had customers from Guatemala, Panama and India in just a few hours,’’ said Kathy Barnes, a fourth-grade teacher who works part-time at the apparel shop Collections. “People from all over were coming to Mayo for a study on chewing tobacco. That’s why I always ask people where they’re from — you hear the greatest stories.’’
Deep down, every morel hunter believes in divine providence.
There's nothing so providential as baskets overflowing with morels, and the taste is so divine hunters dream about it all winter. In spring, they offer a fervent prayer to the mushroom gods: May the fungus be among us.
Morels do taste heavenly. But it's the hunt that's so addictive, not the mushroom itself. For one thing, it's fun to find something for free that's so expensive in stores and restaurants, and it's fun to beat the odds by finding something so notoriously elusive.
