Twin Cities
Walking on water
In winter, a famous creek through Minneapolis becomes a snowshoe trail.
If you’re a paddler, you’re done for the winter. But when one door closes, another opens.
I’ve been meaning to paddle Minnehaha Creek through the heart of Minneapolis for years, but the water won't stand still — sometimes it's too high, sometimes too low.
This 22-mile creek, named for a romantic character in an 1855 hit poem, connects everything that makes Minneapolis famous: the Mississippi River, Minnehaha Falls, the Chain of Lakes, Lake Minnetonka.
Learning to love the megamall
The Mall of America is huge, but take your time and you'll find its heart.
Twin Citians can boast all they want about their quality of life, their lakes and their urban civility.
But the only thing most people in other states and countries really want to know about is the Mall of America, and the very interesting fact that there's no tax on clothing and shoes in Minnesota.
Opened in 1992, the megamall was an instant hit, attracting eager shoppers from all over the world, most arriving with empty suitcases they can stuff with deals.
Cruising around Excelsior
On the Twin Cities' fringe, a historic lake-resort town still draws day-trippers.
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.
Bicycling in St. Paul and beyond
Minnesota's capital city has its own set of marquee trails on rivers and lakes.
Lately, Minneapolis has been basking in the hoopla over being named Bicycling magazine’s No. 1 best city for bicycling.
St. Paul, as usual, is overshadowed by its larger twin. But you’d never guess it from the throngs of bicyclists on the popular Gateway State Trail, on Summit Avenue through town and on the St. Paul Classic tour, started 12 years before the Minneapolis Bike Tour and the state’s largest.
Like Minneapolis, the capital city has paved trails around lakes, past historic landmarks and along the Mississippi.
Biking in Minneapolis
On the breathtaking Grand Rounds, bicyclists soak up the scenery.
For more than a century, people have marveled at the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis.
It's not so much the beauty of the lakes, though they're glorious. It's more the fact that ordinary folk can walk, bike, swim and play around them — all of them.
It almost wasn't so. Back in 1882, landscape architect Horace Cleveland had to argue his case for putting aside land on the city's lakes, creeks and river.
On the river in Minneapolis
The energy first created by a waterfall has returned to this Mill City district.
The Falls of St. Anthony wasn't a very tall waterfall.
But it was broad and thundering, and the only major drop on the Mississippi. More importantly, it got good PR from two best-selling travel guides, Father Louis Hennepin's 1683 "Description de la Louisiane'' and Jonathan Carver's 1778 "Travels through the Interior Parts of North-America,'' both of which exaggerated its height.
Other explorers came, and in the 1820s ordinary tourists followed the first steamboats up the Mississippi, where they admired the falls, gawked at the Dakota living in nearby tepees and dined on such Wild West delicacies as buffalo, elk and sturgeon.
A jolly holiday in Minneapolis
A lighted parade draws tourists and locals alike into the lively heart of the city.
During the holidays, there's no place like home. In fact, it's the perfect getaway.
Every year, I go to downtown Minneapolis to see the Holidazzle parade. I get tickets for Handel's "Messiah" at Orchestra Hall. I hunt for stocking stuffers on Nicollet Mall.
I don't stay overnight. I live here, after all.
10 great day trips around the Twin Cities
Cruise Lake Minnetonka, stroll on the St. Croix or climb a historic bluff.
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.
Bicycling through the Minneapolis suburbs
An expanding web of trails takes bicyclists from the city into the lake-filled countryside.
For decades, the scenic bicycle trails around Minneapolis’ Chain of Lakes have drawn people from the suburbs into the city. Now, it’s the city folks’ turn to visit.
Hundreds of people daily already are riding the new Dakota Rail Trail, which takes bicyclists past a chain of ponds, wetlands and bays on the north shore of Lake Minnetonka, through some of its toniest villages.
The newest is the Luce Line Regional Trail, which passes two swimming beaches and a sea of cattails on its way from Theodore
Wirth Park to the Luce Line State Trail.
Street of dreams
On St. Paul's Summit Avenue, imposing mansions are remnants of the Gilded Age.
Even tourists from the great European capitals are impressed by Summit Avenue.
It's not just one mansion, but one after another, all the way from the Mississippi River to the massive Cathedral of St. Paul, overlooking downtown and the state Capitol.
This five-mile stretch is one of the most splendid, best-preserved Victorian streets in the United States. The oldest are at
the east end, on the lip of the bluff overlooking downtown and the Mississippi River.
Camping in the Twin Cities
For many, a lake vacation is a hop, skip and jump from home.
Not all the beach camping in the Upper Midwest is in a state park or even in the countryside.
In the western suburbs of Minneapolis, Three Rivers Park District offers camping and camper cabins on lakes in three park reserves. They’re a great deal for visitors and also for locals who want to save gas money and travel time.
The campsites at Baker Park Reserve in Maple Plain, near the beach on Lake Independence, are most popular. The campground includes four camper cabins with screened porches; three sleep six and one is accessible and sleeps five. They’re $50.
Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis
The lakes, river and creeks that ring this metropolis are a magnet year-round.
Every big city has skyscrapers. Every big city has museums and monuments. But no other city has as many beautiful lakes and parks Minneapolis does.
Early in the city's history, when its lakes still were considered swampy boondocks, city fathers decided to make their shores
public property.
Today, the most expensive homes in the city face the lakes, but the public — in-line skaters, bicyclists, dog-walkers — owns the shorelines.
Curiosity camp
With fun day trips, the University of Minnesota finds a cure for "vacation-deficit disorder."
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.
Whiskey and cherubs
In downtown St. Paul, a cluster of family attractions make the city's origins a distant memory.
It's ironic, considering its past, that St. Paul is such a wholesome destination.
Liquor brought the first white resident to Minnesota's capital; he was Pierre Parrant, a swinish, one-eyed former voyageur named Pig's Eye. He set up his first tavern near Fort Snelling, but was rousted in 1837 by officers who were tired of the trouble it caused.
The hovel he built in a cave down river was St. Paul's first building, and the area around the tavern he built later, in the
future downtown, was known briefly as Pig's Eye.
Minneapolis spa getaway
A group of girlfriends find a bargain in their own back yard.
In winter, a spa getaway sounds like just the thing.
Relax, rejuvenate and renew. Cleanse the skin, clear the mind. Get rid of stress and enter a portal to tranquility.
Like a lot of women, I thought a spa vacation would make a good girlfriend getaway, a relaxing break in routine.
© Beth Gauper, 2007 - 2012 all rights reserved
