![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
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.
Not all the beach camping in the Upper Midwest is in a state park or even in the countryside.
In the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, 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.
Reservations open for the season at 8 a.m. Monday, March 15, and holiday weekends will fill in the first few hours. They're phone-only; call 763-559-6700.
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. It’s the last link in a 48-mile chain of five trails between the Mississippi River in south Minneapolis and the rural town of Winsted.
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.
To the north, St. Croix Falls is a hub for hiking, paddling and bicycling. To the south, historic Northfield straddles the Cannon River.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the summer, everyone who isn't working flocks to the lakes to canoe, sail, skate, swim and picnic. Concerts are held nearly every evening at the lovely Lake Harriet bandshell, and neighborhood festivals and theater performances are held in lakeside parks. During Aquatennial in July, the lakes become the setting for dozens of events, including sand-castle competitions, milk-carton boat races and regattas.
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.
