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.

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.

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.

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.''

But the food . . . not so much. When it comes to herring and lutefisk, I'd rather be Polish. Pierogi with sour cream and sauteed onions — now, there's an ethnic food I can love.

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.

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.

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 food events, see A feast of festivals. For arts fairs, see Art al fresco. For dragon-boat festivals, see Waking the dragon.

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 food events, see A feast of festivals. For arts fairs, see Art al fresco. For dragon-boat festivals, see Waking the dragon.

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. 

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.

For a long time, people in 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.

Superior got the idea from Thunder Bay, and it hosted its first Lake Superior Dragon Boat Festival in 2002. It was a roaring success, and other cities have followed suit. Now, the races are one of the fastest-growing water sports.

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-lamι 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.

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.

The 20th century was hard on the Poles. Many immigrated to Wisconsin, giving it the nation's highest percentage of residents with Polish ancestry. They were thousands of miles from home, but they still had a yen for potato pancakes.

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.

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.

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.