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.

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.

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.

On the most scenic part of the Mississippi, a steam-powered paddlewheeler cruises past 500-foot bluffs and river towns filled with history, and pontoons glide into backwaters. In the northwoods, a pontoon explores a wild part of the Wisconsin River. And sandstone formations on the Dalles and in the Dells give passengers on paddlewheelers, launches and Ducks plenty to look at.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

They enchant geologists, of course, but also scuba divers, rock climbers and botanists. The rest of us, too — hikers, birders, campers, Boy Scouts.

We all go to give Devil's Lake its due.

Just south of the Wisconsin Dells, Devil's Lake State Park draws 1.3 million people a year, more than twice as many as Minnesota's most-visited state park, Gooseberry Falls.

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.

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.