![]() Pick up maplewood-smoked herring and trout to go from Russ Kendall’s Smokehouse in Knife River. Order a Danish cream with raspberry sauce dessert in the Technicolor Native American splendor of the Naniboujou Lodge dining room. Do go chasing Minnehaha Falls after eating fried haddock tacos at Sea Salt Eatery. Prance your feet purple at the annual Grape Stomp Festival at Carlos Creek Winery in Alexandria. Sample more than 130 of Minnesota’s best craft brews at the Winter Beer Dabbler. (If you can’t stomach the lye-cured fish, try a semlor bun from FIKA Café instead.) ģ6. Attend the American Swedish Institute’s annual lutefisk dinner. Experience Native American foods and decolonized cooking techniques at Owamni, the first full-service Indigenous restaurant from Sioux Chef co-owner Sean Sherman. Pick up a few pounds of the nationally famous cracked-black-pepper bacon at Thielen Meats in Pierz. Tap a tree for maple syrup during spring thaw. ![]() ![]() Favorites include Pleasant Grove in Waseca and Red Barn Farm in Northfield. Spend a lazy afternoon playing cornhole, petting goats, and eating brick-oven pies at a pizza farm. (Tip: Do it after you’ve visited the CHS Miracle of Birth Center.) ģ1. Eat everything on a stick at the Minnesota State Fair. Tour the Spam Museum in Austin, and don’t forget to raid the gift shop for limited-edition tins of the canned meat. Try the stuffed chicken wings, spicy papaya salad, and tricolor dessert at the Hmongtown Marketplace. City slickers, catch your dinner in the trout stream at Jax Cafe. Scooch down when the waitress tells you to. Snag one of the 14 stools at the counter of Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown for a buttermilk pancake as big as its plate. Stroll the gorgeous flower-lined brick paths at Munsinger Clemens Gardens in St. Track a wolf pack on an overnight camping tramp with biologists from the International Wolf Center in Ely. Its white pines are estimated to be at least 300 years old. Trek through the Lost 40 SNA, 114 acres of old-growth trees in the Big Fork State Forest overlooked by loggers in 1882. Throw back a Hamm’s (or four) at the Brainerd Jaycees’ Ice Fishing Extravaganza on Gull Lake in Nisswa, the world’s largest annual ice-fishing tournament/tailgating party on ice. (Way to Go Outfitters in Ely can help you plan the route.) Ģ2. Learn to portage-or at least hang a bear bag-in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. See the Kensington Runestone in Alexandria (bonus points: solve the mystery). Discover the difference between stalagmites and stalactites when exploring the underground pools and passageways at Mystery Cave/Forestville State Park, home to the state’s longest known cave. Snow tube to a choreographed laser light show at Buck Hill in Burnsville. Shoot the Northern Lights at Voyageurs National Park, now a certified Dark Sky preserve. Bike the full Root River bike trail through the limestone bluffs and rolling hills surrounding Lanesboro. Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wildernessġ6.Fly a ginormous kite on a frozen lake at the annual Kites on Ice Festival in Buffalo. Teach Fido how to skijor in the Three Rivers Park District-and then enter him in the Skijor Loppet at Theodore Wirth Regional Park in Golden Valley. Shred the red (dirt, that is) on the 50-plus miles of single-track mountain biking trails in the Cayuna Country State Recreation Area. Collect agates along the shore of Lake Superior at Good Harbor Bay. Pond Hockey Championship on Lake Nokomis. Root for your favorite sniper in the U.S. Drive the Great River Road from the Mississippi headwaters in Itasca State Park down to Iowa (or the Gulf of Mexico, if you’re feeling particularly ambitious). Love every uphill step of the final Summit Avenue stretch. Visit the Northwest Angle, the surveying error that became the northernmost point in the Lower 48 it’s accessible only by crossing Lake of the Woods or cutting through Canada. Extra credit for spotting an American lotus. Kayak the remote backwaters of the Mississippi River with Broken Paddle Guiding in Wabasha. Your best bet: the Gunflint and Arrowhead trails near Grand Marais between mid-September and mid-October, which is mating season. Glide along the 5.2-mile Riverbend Skate Path in Warroad, the longest ice skating trail in the United States. Go mushing in Ely, the sled-dog capital of America, or watch from the starting line of the John Beargrease sled-dog marathon in Duluth. ![]() Then, head to one of the 700 lakes boasting Minnesota’s state grain, concentrated in Aitkin, Itasca, Cass, and St. Your best bet: the 28-mile Lady Slipper Scenic Byway, between Blackduck and Highway 2, in late June. Find a Showy Lady Slipper, the state flower. (If you can only swing a day trip, make it the 3-mile Oberg Mountain Loop near Tofte at the peak of fall color.) Ģ. Cover eight state parks and 310 breathtaking miles on the Superior Hiking Trail when hoofing it from Jay Cooke State Park to the Canadian border.
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