![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
Even in a dismal economy, there's no need to stay home.
If you're on a budget, you'll have to look beyond fancy resorts, spas and bistros. Try the western Minneapolis suburbs, where you can rent a cabin for eight for $115, firewood included.
Watch prairie chickens courting on the central Wisconsin sand plains or go up north to Ely for a spring paddle. Ride a zip line at a Missouri camp or go bicycling on the Munger Trail from a lodge in eastern Minnesota.
In summer, it’s not as hard as you’d think to take a trip for $100 or less.
Many of the great travel experiences in the Upper Midwest can’t be bought, anyway – swimming in a Great Lake, hiking on a wooded trail, canoeing under an eagle's nest.
For $100, you won’t be sitting down to a candlelight dinner, but you might be dining by firelight. You won't be renting
speedboats, but you might have your own boardwalk to the beach.
What a way to spend a weekend: hiking up and down ravines, clambering on rock, admiring views of water from ridgelines.
“It’s like hiking on the North Shore,’’ my husband said.
But it wasn’t Lake Superior’s North Shore. It was Iowa. And everyone knows Iowa is one big, flat cornfield.
Before you head out the door, check to see what deals are waiting for you – because all you have to do is ask.
Many people know that their AAA card gets them a 10 percent discount at most hotels. But I suspect many members of public radio and other arts organizations have forgotten about the great deals they can get on inns, restaurants and entertainment.
If you’re a member of Minnesota Public Radio or Wisconsin Public Radio, you can get two nights for the price of one at Fitger’s in Duluth, which has downhill and cross-country skiing right in the city.
As people who like to ride bikes know, an organized bicycle tour is one of the great deals of vacation travel.
Why pay big bucks to an "adventure'' outfitter when you can join a local tour for very little? You could pay Timberline Adventures of Denver $1,800 for its tour of Missouri's Katy Trail — or you could pay Missouri state parks $250 for the same thing, albeit with accommodations in tents, not hotels.
For anyone who's reasonably fit, bike tours are the best possible way to see the countryside, and sponsors do everything for participants except pedal and set up tents.
What’s the mark of a true Midwesterner? Is it ice-fishing? An obsession with weather? Saying “you betcha’’ and calling soda "pop''?
No, what truly binds us is our love of a bargain.
We love finding good deals even in good times. But now that they're bad, we need those deals.
When reserving a hotel room, there are deals, and then there’s Priceline.
Five years ago, I tried the on-line bidding service, which has a big catch: You don’t know what hotel you’ve
reserved until you’ve paid for the room. We got a hotel in Miami’s South Beach that had a decent location but was
noisy, had an unfriendly staff and charged an extra "resort fee.''
After that, I’d had it with Priceline – until friends made me reconsider.
Chicago is on a roll. Millennium Park is wildly popular, and the city has been crowned the western White House.
But long before Barack Obama made Chicago cool by association, people had noticed that it's a whole lot of fun. These days, tourists have to compete with hordes of conventioneers and suburbanites fleeing back to the city. Prices, of course, have gone up.
But Chicago is a populist town, and there's lots to do for free. Here are 10 tips for making a trip affordable.
For people who love the outdoors, luxury is in the eye of the beholder.
Is it a Jacuzzi or a latrine? A four-course breakfast or a fire ring?
The answer is not so obvious. If the choice also includes starry skies, silence and snow-laden pines, many folks would take a camper cabin over a fancy inn, even if they have to use vault toilets and cook over a fire.
To get a bargain on lodgings, you can try Priceline or Hotwire. You can clip coupons or use AAA or AARP discounts.
You can try every angle, but a single traveler still won’t find a bed that’s cheaper than those at hostels.
Many Americans think hostels are used only by college-age backpackers in Europe. That’s how most of us discover them. My first stay, at a hostel in the heart of London, was memorable: I made friends with two other college kids, and we celebrated my 19th birthday by going out for fish and chips and then to the theater. As we walked home, Prince Phillip and the Queen Mother drove by.
As adults, we sometimes forget how great it is to be a kid.
People give you toys to play with. They show you new games and explain things in interesting ways. They feed you freshly baked cookies and s'mores.
Kids take it for granted. But I didn't one January, when I got to stay at Deep Portage Conservation Reserve, in the woods north of Brainerd.
Fall is the busiest travel season of the year — we all know the nice days are numbered, and we're going to try our damnedest to make them count.
But with pretty much everyone heading out to look for fall color, especially on weekends, there are very few bargains.
That's why those of us on a budget look to our old friends: the state parks, the mom-and-pop motels, the environmental centers, the hostels, the outdoors clubs.
Want to save money on trips? Then, step away from the fancy catalog.
Glossy pages of snow-capped mountains and medieval castles are eye candy for travelers. But the prettier the brochure, the more eye-popping the prices.
Luxury excursions are like Jaguars and Jimmy Choo shoes. We covet them, we window-shop for them, but only a few of us can afford them.
Until recently, my memories of college dorms mostly involved sloppy drunks, sloppier roommates and a bathroom shared by the whole floor.
Then my husband and I stayed at Marquette University in Milwaukee. It was as quiet as a cathedral, and we had a private bath and a panoramic view of the city from our 17th-floor picture windows.
We paid $28 apiece, which was nice because we like to save money. But mostly, we stayed at Marquette because it was so convenient, three blocks from the special bus that takes summer visitors to the lakefront Henry Maier Festival Park and right on the route that takes baseball fans to Miller Park on game days. We also brought our bikes, and we knew we could bring them up to our room — at a college, nobody bats an eye about that.
In Kandiyohi County, it's thanks to the last Ice Age that life's a beach today.
Near Willmar, a lobe of the last glacier came to a grinding halt 12,000 years ago, dumping massive blocks of ice that made big dents in the ground.
Now, they're lakes, popping up like mirages at the edge of soybean fields, behind screens of ash and cottonwoods. Farther north, they're hidden amid rocky meadows and rolling hillocks full of glacial rubble.
