![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
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.
“When I was less experienced at this, I would make bold predictions, and invariably I was wrong,’’ says Bob Sprague, naturalist at Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “So now I stick to saying, ‘It’ll be the same as it ever was.’ ’’
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. She asked the captain, who had stopped to take on wood, if she had time to climb it and, when he sent a clerk to escort her, easily beat him in a race to the bluff top. The peak has been called Mount Hosmer ever since.
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 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.
But fall is for lingerers. It's hard to move fast when there are so many glowing colors to gape at.
As wooded shorelines erupt in fall colors, narrated river cruises become especially popular. That's easy to understand — why not kick back and let the scenery come to you?
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.
Here are some of the best tours.
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. "
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. Here are seven other routes that will put you in the middle of the scenery. And if fall color doesn't materialize when you expect it to, don't worry: These drives are pretty great any time.
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.
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.
In Wisconsin, a bunch of rocks sets hearts aflutter.
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.
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.
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.
Here, the Chippewa lobe of the vast Wisconsin Glacier began to recede, dumping debris and chunks of ice that became pristine
kettle lakes, and the trails are among the loveliest of the Ice Age Trail's zigzagging, 1,000-mile route across
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.