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In summer and fall, don't rely on luck to get a reservation on Minnesota's North Shore.
In the heat of summer, everyone wants to bask in Lake Superior's cooling breezes. In fall, everyone wants to see the fall colors. In winter weekends, skiers flock in.
Below are a few of the many places to stay; reserve as far in advance as possible for popular dates, including Minnesota's
school break the third weekend of October. For an overview, see Introducing Minnesota's North Shore.
Ever since there's been a Minnesota, people have wanted to see its abundant waters.
The first curious tourists came up the Mississippi in the 1820s with the first steamboats, to see St. Anthony Falls and nearby
tepees and to dine on buffalo, elk and sturgeon.
By the 1850s, city folk in the East already were pining for the unspoiled wilderness; one of them, Israel Garrard, was on a hunting trip from his home near Cincinnati when he saw a point on Lake Pepin, a widening in the Mississippi, and settled there. In 1865, he opened the Lake Side Hotel, and Frontenac became Minnesota's first resort.
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.
“If Naniboujou is your guide,’’ they wrote in the prospectus, “it is a smooth path through majestic groves, between rocky walls, over mossy ledges, through clumps of spruce that moose have nibbled . . . and to mysteries known only to those who belong.’’ There would be every comfort, and yet “simplicity and the charms of outdoor life must prevail.’’
In Minnesota’s state parks, the goodies go way beyond hiking trails, picnic sites and fishing piers.
Minnesota parks house their visitors, too, not only in campgrounds but in suites and cabins and lodges and even a few
split-level homes. Of course, they're very popular.
But the most popular place of all is the Illgen Falls Cabin in Tettegouche State Park, especially in summer. For what could be better than having a 45-foot waterfall, spa and swimming hole in the back yard, with entertainment from a corps of cliff jumpers?
Contrary to common wisdom, the best deals in travel aren’t too good to be true.
The minute I heard about the “rustic group camp’’ at Big Bay State Park on Madeline Island, in the Apostles, I was interested. It’s not a camp but a lodge, with a choice location near the lagoon of Big Bay. There’s space for 20 people and a kitchen with a full-size refrigerator and stove, and it was available to nonprofit groups for $40 per night.
For that, I didn’t expect much. But when I went there one August with the Minnesota Rovers Outdoors Club, we found a
two-story, atmospheric log lodge with a fieldstone fireplace, plank floors and a long screened porch, set in its own grove of
cedars.
There’s a surefire rule that applies to rented houses: Anything you really need but don’t bring is exactly what the house won’t have.
Virtually every house has coffee filters. But the house I rented on a lake in Cable, Wis., didn’t, and I was reduced to straining coffee — unsuccessfully — through paper bags and toilet paper. It also didn’t have paper towels, a cutting board, a corkscrew or kindling. It did have many items that often are sorely missed — a colander, a juice pitcher, a muffin pan and — wonders! — a decent chopping knife.
It’s always hard to know what to bring. I brought my Swiss garlic press to the Norway Point Guesthouse in Minnesota's St. Croix State Park, but its amazingly well-equipped utensil drawer had one exactly like it, and its cupboards were full of dry goods left by other guests. I brought a crockpot to my Mountain View Lodges cabin on the Upper Peninsula, but it already had one.
If you don't have a cabin of your own, Minnesota has one you can borrow.
Some really are cabins, but others are houses, complete with two-car garages, like the one at Bear Head Lake State Park, previously occupied by the park manager. Some were private houses that have been renovated, like the Illgen Falls Cabin in Tettegouche State Park.
There's something for everyone in Itasca State Park: rooms in a historic lodge, classic cabins, motel-style rooms and new
suites with computer access. It doesn't have camper cabins, but you'll find those at 22 other Minnesota state parks.
In the middle of Minnesota's Wild River State Park, a ski’s length from 35 miles of groomed trails and a 10-minute trek from the St. Croix River, sits a cozy little house surrounded by forest.
For one winter night, the two-bedroom, carpeted house, a private residence built not long before the park was established in 1978, belonged to me and my children. We arrived at dusk, and my children swarmed over it as only children can do, giving a running commentary: "Boy, this is a nice cabin,’’ said 6-year-old Peter. "Wow, a nice shower. Isn’t this great? And oh, look’’ — he peered out the window at a big thermometer — "you can tell the temperature.’’
It was 0 degrees. But we settled in happily, building a fire in the wood-burning stone hearth, making spaghetti in the modern kitchen, then sliding a movie into the VCR and watching it while eating popcorn popped in the microwave. It was a little odd, being the only humans that night in one of Minnesota’s largest state parks, but we were definitely comfortable.
In 1997, a small-town damsel who married a prince — well, an heir — waved a silver wand over her hometown of Perry, Iowa, and unusual things began to happen.
She took the Hotel Pattee, a dowdy brick building on the brink of demolition, and
filled it with terra-cotta tile, Persian rugs and so much Honduran mahogany she cornered the market for it. Artists moved in
and painted murals and whimsical folk-art lamps, bedsteads and armoires.
Decorators went to work on the Arts and Crafts lobby and library, a railroad dining-car restaurant and 40 theme rooms and suites that honor everyone from Louis Armstrong to the creator of the "Alley Oop’’ comic strip.
Every week, a few dozen people join an exclusive club high above Minnesota's North Shore.
To get there, they lug all their food and gear 1¾ miles up and down a steep hill. They draw their own water and make their own fires. They clean and then lug their garbage over the same hill.
And they consider themselves lucky.
In the north woods, only the passage of time creates a classic.
There's nothing like the feel of a vintage lodge. Whatever it comes from — the burnished logs hewed by ax, the hearths made of stones picked from local fields, the faint fragrance of aged pine and cedar — it can't be ordered from the local furniture store.
Jim Kerkow and Craig Mason know, because they own a furnishings business and they love old lodges. They were building a cabin near Hayward, Wis., and staying at nearby Spider Lake Lodge when its owner pointed out the obvious.