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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.