![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
When summer comes, there's no time to waste.
Everyone is throwing a party, and you're invited. Many of the best are listed below.
For even more festivals, see Celebrating roots, a comprehensive list of ethnic festivals. For great places to pig out, see A feast of festivals. For outdoor art fairs, see Art al fresco. For dragon-boat festivals, see Waking the dragon. For beer festivals, see Best brew fests.
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.
Food always is the main draw, and there's nothing bicycle tourists like more than food. Grape harvests result in wine festivals and Oktoberfests in a river of beer; that goes over pretty well, too.
On a beautiful summer day in Milwaukee, history's underdogs were having a ball.
They were listening to pianists play Chopin. They were dancing an exuberant style of polka. They were tucking into pierogi and paczki.
Call it payback time for Poles.
In general, I like my heritage. It involves Vikings and trolls and populist politics. At festivals, tow-headed children dance
around in cute outfits.
But the food . . . not so much. When it comes to herring and lutefisk, I'd rather be Polish. Plump pierogi with sour cream and
sauteed onions — now, there's an ethnic food I can love.
Luckily, it's easy to piggyback on other cultures in the Upper Midwest. Yes, many of us came from Germany, Ireland and Norway. But we also came from Greece, Ghana, Switzerland, Iceland, Scotland, Ukraine — and there are festivals honoring those cultures and those of the Dakota, Ojibwe, Cree and Ho-Chunk, who already were here.
As soon as rhubarb leaves unfurl and morels pop out of the ground, towns across the region begin their salutes to the local specialty.
It starts with Norwegian lefse on Syttende Mai and continues to Finnish pasties, German pretzels, Czech kolacky, Danish
pancakes and American pie. There will be music and parades and all kinds of goofy contests — rhubarb-stalk throwing in
Lanesboro, the rutabaga shot put in Calumet — but mostly, there will be a lot to eat.
If you’ve ever said, “I could eat a hundred of those!’’ you'll get your chance this summer. Here are some of the premier places to pig out in 2009.
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. "
Every good parade tells a story. Pay attention, and you'll learn everything you need to know about a town.
Take New Ulm, Minn., a town of 14,000 at the confluence of the Minnesota and Cottonwood rivers.
You'll see gold-painted gymnasts in gold-lamé wigs, representing the Turners who founded New Ulm. A horse-drawn wagon rolls by from Schell, the second-oldest family-owned brewery in the nation. And here come the cannons of the New Ulm Battery, formed after the Dakota nearly wiped out the town in 1862.
In the Upper Midwest, it's hard to know when spring starts.
On St. Patrick's Day, revelers may parade in sun or sleet; you have to be prepared for both. In the north woods, ski slopes hold spring luaus, carnivals and egg hunts, and skiers had better slather on the sun block or they'll burn.
March is the month for expos — antiques, autos, gardens, golf, pets and sports — and for tastings of beer, wine and cheese. Birding festivals start in April, and in May the flowers start popping out and festival season starts in earnest.
By April, the harbingers of spring are on the move.
"The spring migration is well underway!'' comes the report from Crex Meadows refuge, in northwest Wisconsin near Grantsburg. "Eagles and swans, Canada geese, robins, sparrows, sandhills cranes have arrived!''
It's no secret there's buried treasure right here in Minnesota.
It's in every gravel pit, along every railroad track, on every beach. All you have to do is look to find a Lake Superior agate, Minnesota's official state gemstone.
And every July, agates also can be found spread over Moose Lake's main street — 350 pounds of them, some even polished, hidden along with 1,200 quarters in 4 tons of rock.
True northerners don't let cold weather keep them indoors, not when they could be out on the ice playing broomball and bowling turkeys. Below are some of the fun festivals going on around the region in 2009.
Look for fireworks everywhere New Year's Eve, especially in La Crosse, where the Skyrockers are famous for their pyrotechnics from Grandad Bluff (midnight, with a kids' show at 6 p.m.). Prairie du Chien celebrates with the Droppin' of the Carp, and the eastern Wisconsin town of Plymouth has a Cheese Drop.
For many people, the Minnesota River Valley is full of shadows.
In 1862, years of greed and misunderstanding erupted into a clash that cost settlers their lives, the Dakota their homeland and
a new state its innocence. Even today, the valley's lush peacefulness is undercut by anger and guilt.
But on the first weekend of August, people of indigenous and European descent alike come to Upper Sioux Agency State Park to have a good time. At a wacipi, or powwow, the tradition of welcoming outsiders has held steady for many generations.
The Cornish have been good to Mineral Point.
In the 1830s, skilled tin miners from Cornwall, England, came to southwest Wisconsin, replacing the rough frontiersmen whose "badger'' digs gave the state a nickname but the town an unsavory atmosphere.
"They'd start fights just for entertainment,'' says Lisa Kreul, a tour guide at the historic site Pendarvis. "Not until the Cornish came in 1837 did the town start to settle down.''
In June, racing season moves into full throttle in resort towns around Minnesota.
Speeding turtles begin their weekly sprints in Nisswa and Longville. In Perham, the "International'' Turtle Races — the
town says they've attracted competitors and spectators from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East — begin the week
after Memorial Day.
Pelican Rapids holds weekly minnow races. In Cuyuna, ticks race only once a season, but it's a serious event: Veterinarians check for steroid use before the competition.
For a long time, the people of Superior, Wis., observed mostly Scandinavian traditions.
And then the dragons arrived.
In China, the works of poet Qu Yuan inspired dragon-boat races, which are held worldwide and have been popular in Canada for many years.
First, an elf sashayed down the street.
Behind him marched adults in bunads, the traditional Norwegian folk costume, and two shaggy little boys wearing the long noses, beards and tails of trolls.
Baton twirlers, roller-limbo skaters, polka dancers, folk dancers, fiddlers, buglers and queens of all kinds followed, lobbing torrents of Tootsie Rolls and hard candy to the crowd along the route. My children thought it was the best parade they'd ever seen.
On lazy summer days, Walker is a classic northwoods Minnesota town.
I've been going to a lake resort near there with my family for years. We ride our bikes into town on the Heartland State Trail,
eat ice cream at the Village Square and buy muskmelons and corn on the cob from the stand near the gas station.
The pace is slow, serene — unless a Crazy Day Sale falls on a cloudy day, in which case the resorts empty and shoppers crowd into the town of 1,100 like sheep to salt.
When a small town is about as pleasing as can be, what else can it do?
Why, make sure everyone notices, of course.
In 1972, an old Yankee mill town just north of Milwaukee started a Wine & Harvest Festival. Two years later, it started Winter Festival. Eight years after that, it started Strawberry Festival. And people poured into Cedarburg by the thousands.
Oh, the joy of being German.
There's no question that Germans know how to have a good time. After all, they've given the world Oktoberfest, half-gallon steins and "The Little Chicken Dance.''
And what else? Beer, of course, the enjoyment of which is a God-given right to Germans; their adage "Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalts'' roughly translates as "Malt and hops, to God, are tops.''
No one ever accused Milwaukee of being flashy.
Best known for tractors, motorcycles and beer, it’s a meat-and-potatoes kind of town, stolid and practical like the Germans who built it.
It’s not what you’d call a trendy destination. And yet every time I go there, I have a great time.
There's no use hiding from winter — it lasts too long, and eventually that living room will get old.
Many of the tourist spots we love to visit in summer work hard to lure us back when it's cold, offering festivals with lots of
fun in the snow, plus bonfires and chili feeds to warm us up afterward.
For a spectacular spectator event, watch the start of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Duluth or international
ski-jumpers in Westby, Wis., or Iron Mountain, Mich. To join in yourself, try Madison's Winter Festival or the Gunflint's
Winter Tracks.
Like most women who take care of small creatures, Karla Kinstler splits her life into two parts: Before Alice and After Alice.
Before Alice, Kinstler and her husband, Ken, could sleep late, go out on dates and travel whenever they felt like it.
But then little Alice came along. Alice wakes them up at the crack of dawn, sulks if they leave her and leaves messes all over the house. Alice is a spoiled brat, Karla Kinstler admits.
Visiting Chicago one December, I was bowled over by how merry everyone was.
The airport-shuttle driver, the bus driver, a UPS man on the street — they all volunteered big smiles and cheery greetings. Twice, people on the street ran after me to return a dropped glove; one wished me Merry Christmas in a Slavic accent.
Could it be . . . Chicago Nice? It was either that or pixie dust.
In Bayfield, Wis., the apple has mushroomed.
In 1961, the apple was the object of a small village festival. Today, it draws 60,000 people to a fall blowout featuring all things apple — fritters, sundaes, dumplings, pies and apple-cheeked children.
On northern Wisconsin's Bayfield Peninsula, Apple Festival is nearly as revered as motherhood.
As soon as the leaves have fallen and cold winds start to blow, the holidays get under way. This is the season for craft fairs, theme feasts and Christmas parades. Here are some of the best of 2008.
Holiday Parade in Oshkosh, Wis. Look for floats, marching bands and, of course, Santa Claus. 10 a.m. Nov. 8.
During harvest time in a vineyard, turning purple has nothing to do with the Minnesota Vikings.
Purple is what you'll be if you get into a wooden tub of grapes and try to turn them into juice with your bare feet. Vineyards don't get their juice that way anymore, but many still offer a grape stomp, and there's nothing goofier to do on an autumn day.
There are prizes for those who extract the most juice and those who show the most "style,'' so wearing a creative costume helps. And many grape stomps feature an "I Love Lucy'' look-alike contest, in tribute to the famous 1956 episode in which the comedienne takes a job in an Italian vineyard and, of course, makes a mess of things.
Even in a region rich in ethnicity, the Dutch stand out.
In a town square in Iowa, lacy white hats shaped like pyramids, horns and half-moons bob high atop women's heads. Men wear black caps, breeches or baggy trousers and narrow bands cross at their throats. Their wooden shoes click and clack as they dance.
"These are the weirdest people I've ever seen!'' shrieked a little boy watching from the sidelines.