![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
By the start of September, temperatures cool down and everyone starts thinking the same thing: Time to plan a weekend bike trip.
Autumn is a great time to try out a new bike trail, not only because of fall colors and invigorating weather but because so
many small towns throw harvest festivals in September and October.
Since trails go right through towns, bicycle tourists are right in the middle of the action.
In this part of the world, fall is sweet, but way too short.
All of the quaint little towns along rivers and in the bluffs have to pack their autumn festivals into the same six weekends, rolling out parades, pumpkin contests and oompah bands for all the leaf-peeping tourists.
The choices are paralyzing. Flea market or scarecrow contest? Pumpkin regatta or studio tour? Yodeling contest or dachshund
races?
On a lovely day in fall, few places show off this region better than the St. Croix River Valley between Minnesota and Wisconsin.
The 52-mile stretch from Taylors Falls to the St. Croix’s confluence with the Mississippi at Prescott has everything a tourist could want — shops, historic houses, theaters, train excursions, boat cruises.
But mostly, it has scenery — scenery I wanted to show my nieces Alissa and Livia, who had left Florida to start careers in the Twin Cities. As it turns out, the St. Croix looks awfully good to people raised in Florida.
A fall Saturday dawns, sunny and mild. It’s a perfect day for hiking — but where?
One fall, I looked beyond the usual northwoods favorites: Minnesota's North Shore, the many marquee trails along Wisconsin's Ice Age National Scenic Trail; Michigan's Escarpment Trail in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.
They’re spectacular, but some of the best trails are found in less obvious places — in state forests, wildlife
refuges, prairie, even towns. So I got out my map and picked Governor Knowles State Forest, on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix
River.
Fall is made for festivals. It's harvest time, and the fields and orchards are overflowing. Trees turn red and gold. And it's the last time we'll enjoy warm weather until spring.
The many people who heed the urge to get out and about on crisp autumn weekends make it the busiest tourist season of the year. Any town that can hold a fall festival does, and well-established ones, such as Bayfield's Apple Festival (see Big apples), become almost too popular.
"Apple Fest is an anomaly; it's not what Bayfield is like the other 364 days of the year," says Mary Motiff of Bayfield's Chamber of Commerce. "There are two kinds of people: those who love Apple Fest and those who want to avoid it at all costs. "
As anyone who’s ever planned a fall trip knows, peak leaf color can be elusive.
Betting on a burst of spectacular color is like plugging nickels into a slot machine. To win, all of the figures have to line up: the right number of warm days and cool nights, the right levels of sugar produced, the right amounts of moisture.
In 2009, much of the Upper Midwest was dry in June and July and wet in August. In September, temperatures became unseasonably warm.
Sure, winters can be rough here in wind-chill country. But why do we tough it out? For the big payoff of autumn, of course, with its crisp, sunny days and the luminous orange of the sugar maple, the scarlet of sumac, the golden popple and bronzed oak.
They don't have that in Florida and Arizona. But here, we've got it all: a bright palette of colors, harvest festivals and nifty little towns to explore.
Fall is the time to be out and about. In Minnesota, the state scenic byways are a good bet, as are Wisconsin's Rustic Roads.
Long before the second-growth forests of Minnesota and Wisconsin’s north woods became fall destinations, sightseers were flocking to northeast Iowa.
Flat? Hardly. In this part of Iowa, only the river is flat. Towering bluffs line the Mississippi, providing unparalleled views of the sprawling river plain.
For more than 150 years, people have gone to great lengths to see these views. In 1851, when the town of Lansing consisted of a few log cabins, a
20-year-old steamboat passenger named Harriet Hosmer noticed a particularly steep bluff there.
The skies were leaden and forbidding as Lake Superior slid into view and we descended into Duluth. The wind mauled our hair as we stood alongside the harbor canal, waving to the crew of the Sea Pearl II as it pushed toward Malta with a load of grain.
Driving up the shore, we listened to taped stories of shipwrecks: The sidewheeler Lotta Bernard, pummeled into pieces off Gooseberry Falls on Oct. 29, 1874. The steamer Edenborn, hurled into the mouth of Split Rock River and broken in two on Nov. 28, 1905. The Lafayette, pulverized against a cliff near Encampment Island on the same day.
Ahhhh. This is the North Shore I know and love.
When country artists hang an "Open'' sign on their studios, it's time for seasoned shoppers to hit the road.
Around the region, art-studio tours have been springing up, beckoning art patrons into the countryside just as fall leaves change color.
It's the perfect meeting of minds and pocketbooks — shoppers get to chat with the artists, and artists get to sell right out of their studios.
When fall arrives, we get a sudden urge to hoist a stein of beer, eat a grilled bratwurst and listen to red-cheeked men in
little felt hats play the accordion.
Fall belongs to the Germans, who streamed into the Upper Midwest in the 1850s and still are the largest ethnic group in every
state. Which is a good thing, because Germans like to have fun.
In October 1810, they had so much fun at the wedding of Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen and Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, held in a meadow near Munich, that they decided to do it every year.
Fall is the busiest travel season of the year — we all know the nice days are numbered, and we're going to try our damnedest to make them count.
But with pretty much everyone heading out to look for fall color, especially on weekends, there are very few bargains.
That's why those of us on a budget look to our old friends: the state parks, the mom-and-pop motels, the environmental centers, the hostels, the outdoors clubs.
Around the Upper Midwest, Door County is the tourist destination that other tourist destinations envy.
Everything a tourist loves, it’s got: Lighthouses, craggy shorelines, sand dunes. Golf courses, boutiques, bistros. Bicycle paths, hiking trails, beaches.
There’s a little bit of New England in the white-frame buildings of Ephraim, where tourists click photos of Wilson’s, a century-old ice-cream parlor. There’s a little bit of Europe in Sister Bay, where goats graze on the sod roof of Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant. There’s not much that isn’t picturesque.
In fall, we all love to get out and see the colors on a good tramp through the woods.
But why not let a horse do the walking?
I don’t ride much, but when I do, it’s always autumn. Crisp air and colorful forests call for a trail ride, and the view is always better on a horse.
In the forests and lakes around the northwestern Wisconsin town of Cable, the reds, oranges and yellows of fall are mere gilding on the lily.
This landscape, much of it part of Chequamegon National Forest, is beautiful in any season. In winter, cross-country skiers
glide along forest paths and the 52-kilometer Birkebeiner trail, on which North America's largest and most famous Nordic-skiing
race is held each February.
In spring, the mountain-biking season starts, culminating in September with the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival, the nation's largest.
It was a warm, sunny fall day in the heart of Minnesota. The woods were aglow with color, and there were many ways to wallow in it — on trails for hiking, paved paths for biking, lakes for boating.
But something was missing. Where were all the people?
Apparently, they were on the North Shore, fighting for space amid crowds that arrive as reliably as spawning salmon.
When the last glacier melted out of Wisconsin, it left a gift to future generations.
It wasn't much at first — boulders, heaps of gravel, water, chunks of ice trapped under rubble. But over time, the ice seeped away and created kettle lakes for fishermen. The raging meltwater stripped away softer rock, leaving walls of volcanic rock for climbers and scenic river gorges for canoeists.
The heaps of gravel grew skins of greenery and, with boulders carried down from Canada, created a dramatic landscape.
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.
In fall, everyone wants to be in the woods.
The Superior Hiking Trail Association organizes hikes on Minnesota's North Shore. The Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club host forays to their favorite places. State-park naturalists lead walks. Volunteers on the growing Ice Age National Scenic Trail show off their latest handiwork.
The rest of us get to come along for the ride. One year, I joined the annual Parade of Colors Fall Hike from the Chippewa Moraine Ice Age Interpretive Center, between Bloomer and Cornell in western Wisconsin.
When it comes to hiking, we all like to be on top.
There's nothing like a great view, especially in fall. Climbing until we're eye level with birds and caressed by breezes, watching the land roll away into the horizon, we feel as if we're on top of the world.
Even military officers and scientists turn into poets when faced with a beautiful view.
Every year, it happens like magic: In September, the uniform green of the hardwood forests starts morphing into a rolling wave of reds, russets, golds and orange.
Often, the colors are glowing, as if lit from within, but sometimes they're dull and faded. Some years, the maple color is
spotty, turning here and there over several weeks, and there's no real peak.
In a bad year, there's barely any color at all, just mousy yellows on leaves that drop in the first stiff wind.
