Earlier, Matt, my wakeboarding instructor, swore by Ernie’s on Gull in East Gull Lake, so it is no surprise when we bump into him at the host stand. The 107-year-old restaurant accommodates parking for ATVs, golf carts, and pontoon boats in equal measure. As we arrive with a hankering for walleye sandwiches, a crooner with a silver ponytail shreds the first few bars of Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” and a table of 50-something women sauced up on Bloody Marys promptly lose their minds.
Matt’s other “Ya gotta go” recommendation was Zorbaz, which is its own beast, an only-in-Minnesota micro-chain cloned 11 times over but always plopped by a lake. Best described as a mediocre pizzeria combined with a deeply compromised Mexican restaurant, it uses tiki torches and faux palms laced up with Christmas lights to siren-call hard-core lake lifers. (Servers even bring food to your boat if you don’t want to come ashore.) Every word in the Zorbaz universe that would normally include the letter s has been changed to a z, which makes the menu impossible to read. The scene we encounter on a typical Saturday night morphs from a family-friendly restaurant to a hot-mess nightclub, complete with skinny Elvis impersonators and Barbie-pink bachelorette parties getting tumbledown tipsy on White Claws. When the DJ starts blasting Nelly’s “Country Grammar” and a giant inflatable phallus begins bobbing on the dance floor, it’s our cue to leave.
After three nights at Madden’s, we drive half an hour north to Nisswa, home to about 2,000 residents and the newish lake resort Nature Link. Located in an old hockey camp, it’s a neo-minimalist meditation on lake life—zhuzhed up for the Instagram set with its Colgate-white marble and deep soaking tubs with bath salts placed just so. Its 14 wooded acres are peppered with tall, skinny pines and vestiges of its past life: a creaky seesaw here, a tetherball pole there. Our two-bedroom, two-bath cabin is a short walk from diminutive Clark Lake, where kayaks and Adirondack chairs await.
Nature Link has bicycles for us to use too, which is good news because the 123-mile Paul Bunyan State Trail, the longest bike route in Minnesota, lies just beyond its property line. I pedal the loaner bike for 18 miles the first morning—past quilt shops, smoothie bars, and a reader board advertising a community roller-skating party at the local high school. The sun-dappled path, meandering through corridors of Brobdingnagian trees and past cobalt lakes shimmering in the late-morning light, is flatter than a fritter. Hundreds of lily pads float amid the cattails, some gnarly-edged from too much sun, others bursting with buttery yellow buds. With the rays on my back and George Ezra’s “Shotgun” blasting in my earbuds, I’m on top of the world: a kid on summer break without a care in the world.
Zipping past these bodies of water, hazy like an Andrew Wyeth daydream, I finally get it. It’s not about the lakes; it’s about how you feel when you’re in, on, or near them. They are a happy place in a parallel universe, summer after summer, year after year.
Lake effects
Hugging the banks of Lake Superior, the coldest and deepest of the Great Lakes, North Shore is a 145-mile stretch that runs from Duluth to Grand Portage. It’s characterized by well-groomed hiking trails, historic lighthouses, and that specific kind of Hallmark-y town that inspires workaholics to give up big-city living once and for all. With scores of public and private marinas scattered along its wooded coastline, 14,000-acre Lake Minnetonka outside Minneapolis is a boater’s paradise: Sailboats, steamboats, pontoons, and yachts all ply its mirror-like water, while northern pike tempt anglers, and scene-y restaurant patios draw the suburbs’ peacocking bourgeoisie. Unfurling some 150 miles along the US-Canada border, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness offers backcountry campers 1,100 lakes and 1,500 miles of interconnected canoeing and kayaking routes. While moose sightings aren’t unheard of, you’re more likely to spot bald eagles or wake up to the haunting wail of a loon, the Minnesota state bird.
Snuggled up to Lake Pepin, the widest navigable channel of the Mississippi River, Lake City is the birthplace of waterskiing. Nineteen-year-old resident Ralph Samuelson invented the sport in 1922 when he strapped a pair of wooden boards to his feet and used a clothesline as a tow rope. Today the town of 5,297 goes all in on its annual Water Ski Days festival, attracting madcap adventurers like nonagenarian stilt skier Glenn Sperry each June. Located 75 miles north of the Twin Cities, Minnesota’s second-largest inland lake, Mille Lacs Lake, offers walleye and perch fishing in summer and kiteboarding in winter. The surrounding area has cultural and historical significance for the native Ojibwe and Dakota tribes too, as can be seen in the Mille Lacs Indian Museum and a restored 1930s trading post in Onamia.
This article appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here
