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Survive Revive
Edited by Rachel Hutton
Photo by Kevin White
(page 1 of 4)
When the lakes freeze over and the snowflakes fall, you’ve got two choices: love it or leave it. From sun-kissed beaches to powdery slopes, we’ve got the best ways to do both, with getaways to Cancun, Las Vegas, Lutsen, Canoe Bay, and more.
CANOE BAY
This tranquil retreat is the perfect place to practice the art of doing nothing
By Elizabeth Dehn
HEN MY HUSBAND, Greg, and I set out for Canoe Bay, I am determined to do absolutely nothing. We are, after all, going to a place that elicits wistful sighs from those who’ve been there before. They seem to know something that we do not. They describe a resort so beautiful, so peaceful, that surely we are in for nothing but total relaxation. Whether that’s possible for two people who thrive on chaos (albeit organized), and tend to unwind only in their sleep, remains to be seen.
Located about two hours east of the Twin Cities, in Chetek, Wisconsin, Canoe Bay nestles into 280 acres of rolling, wooded countryside and spring-fed lakes. Dan and Lisa Dobrowolski purchased the secluded property 15 years ago from a religious group that had long abandoned it. Dan had fished and explored the area as a child, when his grandfather owned a neighboring farm. He and Lisa returned to create a luxurious retreat.
Model: Vera Jordanova, Ford Chicago;
Stylist: Liz Roemer; Hair & Makeup:
Carol Stopera, Wehann Agency
Even the most relaxing vacation is, for me, all about exercising—so I can eat really well. I leave Greg to nap (and to Edgewood’s private sauna, steam room, and oversized tub) and walk to the Lodge. Despite my intention to use the fitness center there, once inside I’m entranced by Canoe Bay’s most exquisite space: the library. This two-story, lofted reading room is a labor of love for Lisa Dobrowolski, who stocks it with a well-edited collection of classic and contemporary hard-covers. For the second time that day, I find myself giving in to a deep leather chair, fire at my feet, hot beverage in one hand, Eat, Pray, Love in the other. Suddenly I am 6 again, sleeping in a tent for the first time. It’s like running away.
That evening, we sit down to dinner in the cathedral-ceiling dining room. The cuisine here is often lauded, and we are not disappointed. What I really love, however, are the simple foods served at Canoe Bay: the crusty baked brioche that sandwiches our chicken and apple salad at lunch, the local microbrews in the fridge, the warm caramel rolls delivered to our door at breakfast. At checkout we are handed fresh-baked cookies for the road. I ration them, knowing that when we get home there will be no fire in the fireplace, no Bach on the surround-sound, no escape from real life. All I can do is sigh.
Do everything—or do nothing—at one of these snug hideaways.
* Grand View Lodge on Gull Lake maintains its 80-year legacy as a classic resort. Couples will appreciate the cozy rooms in the main lodge, where invigorating treatments at the Glacial Waters Spa and steak dinners at the 1920s timber-lodge dining room are just steps away. Rates from $200. Nisswa, 866-801-2951, www.grandviewlodge.com* Larsmont Cottages on Lake Superior, 20 miles north of Duluth, offer proximity to snowshoe and cross-country ski trails at Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse. Retreat to the Massage Cottage for a hot-stone massage and sample the resort’s extensive wine list. Rates from $60. Two Harbors, 1-866-687-5634, www.larsmontcottages.com
* Gunflint Lodge, just north of Grand Marais on the Gunflint Trail, is a secluded escape in the north woods. The Romantic Cottages feature stone fireplaces and two-person spas. Get out for a dog-sled ride, or stay in and gaze up at the night sky during Full Moon Lover’s Weekend, February 21-24. Rates from $139. Grand Marais, 800-328-3325, www.gunflint.com
* Spider Lake Lodge in Hayward, Wisconsin, was inspired by the Great Camps of the Adirondacks. The rustic 1923 log lodge boasts lake views, original furnishings, and a hearty breakfast. Ski the Birkebeiner trail or cozy up with a book in the Great Room. Rates from $159. Hayward, Wisconsin, 800-653-9472, www.spiderlakelodge.com
* Woodland Trails bed-and-breakfast features five modern-yet-romantic, individually designed rooms, many complete with fireplaces and whirlpool tubs. Bird- and wildlife-watching opportunities abound on the 500 wooded acres of this country escape. Rates from $165. Hinckley, 320-655-3901, www.woodlandtrails.net
MEXICO
More Minnesotans visit Cancun than any other international destination. Here’s how to go without seeing a single one.
By Tim Gihring
WHEN MY GIRLFRIEND and I leave Minneapolis for Cancun, it is 85 degrees there and zero degrees here. Zilch. Nada. Cold enough to kill a cucaracha. But I still don’t want to go.
Location: Zamas, Tulum, Mexico
I’m also too much of a travel snob to stay at one of the cheesily named all-inclusive compounds a lot of Midwesterners patronize, the kind where the only locals you see are waiters and the atmosphere is about as Mexican as ballpark nachos. Having rickshawed to the Taj Mahal and hiked to Machu Picchu, it’s hard for me not to see Cancun as the anti-vacation: a place to escape from, not to—no matter how good the buffet is at Sandals.
My challenge, then, is to build a more authentic, cultural vacation off a ticket to Cancun. I understand the trip’s appeal: The four-hour flight is no longer than a hop to New York. Heck, Cancun is even in our time zone. At least two guys on our plane are already outfitted in Hawaiian shirts and shorts, ready to hit the sand running. I just don’t care to run into them. So at the airport, we grab a bus to Playa del Carmen, 40 miles south, on the so-called Riviera Maya—the stretch of sand that curves along the Caribbean all the way to Belize and, for the moment anyway, is more popular with Europeans and sea turtles than drunks from Des Moines.
I was here before, 11 years ago, when Playa’s beaches were filled with Italian hippies and aggressive stray dogs—it was great. Days were whiled away at the swing bar (a beach bar with sand at your feet and playground swings suspended from the palm-thatch ceiling) and the cruise crowds stayed well offshore on Cozumel island. If Cancun was famously engineered by the government from swampland (the locale’s original name, Kan Kun, is Mayan for “nest of snakes”), the Riviera Maya has been a more ad-hoc development, as beach bums migrate south or never leave, opening small hotels and dive shops. But the cruise ships now dock directly in town, and Playa is reputedly the fastest-growing city in all of Latin America. As we pull in, I notice a few more sunburned guys in FBI shirts (that’s Federal Bikini Inspector, gringo) than before.
We’re staying at Hotel Básico, a 15-room sliver of hipness that you can hear before you can see. For much of the waking day (assuming you’re awake until 12:30 a.m.), lounge and techno music washes through the hotel like waves, endowing everything from changing clothes to washing up with a pulse. Brushing your teeth was never sexier.
Básico is the rare place that would appeal to both Paris Hilton and her plumber: exposed pipes, polished white concrete walls and floors, inner tubes as wall décor. In tribute to Mexico’s oil industry, strips of recycled tires are used for handles, elongated inner tubes for curtains. The rooftop pools are repurposed petroleum tanks. The place is boutique chic, such that Wallpaper, the über-hip design magazine, as well as Elle, have covered it. It doesn’t hurt that a Polaroid camera is cheekily chained to the bed. It’s just for show—unless someone opens the $25 film pack.
There is something liberating about a good beach hotel, though. Dressing for dinner, I leave my shirt more open than usual, informing my girlfriend that guys are allowed one unfastened button for every thousand miles south they travel. “Not bad,” she allows, “but maybe don’t do this back home.” This is why you take vacations.
We eat in what seems like Little Italy: an intersection with Italian wine bars and restaurants on three of four corners. Playa’s European popularity appears stronger than ever, what with all the gelaterias, Lacoste and K-Swiss stores, and Speedos. (Between my board shorts and my girlfriend’s one-piece, we have enough swimsuit material to clothe half a dozen Italians.) At the Glass Bar, we eat Mediterranean style—pasta, zucchini, grouper, and octopus—and it’s easy to forget we’re in Mexico, until the police pass by with submachine guns.
Playa has changed since I was last here. Nearly all the shops now offer fixed prices rather than bargaining. The beach dogs and beggars have been moved along (to where, we’d rather not contemplate). Indeed, the only pooch I see is a Chihuahua in a purse. We can’t find a good swing bar—they’ve moved indoors, of all things, and gotten rowdier. So we enjoy cucumber martinis on Básico’s rooftop lounge, reclining on bed-like platforms while a black-and-white movie is silently projected on a wall, and wonder how Mexican this experience is.
But of course it is, judging from the lounge music we hear on the beach, the bus, and even in the little colectivo shuttle that ferries hotel workers up and down the Riviera. This is the new, hipper side of Mexico we rarely hear about, more authentic certainly than the souvenir sombreros and serapes. We watch the stylish waiters flirt and dance with friends, and I realize it was never Mexico’s rough edges that fascinated me so much as the sheer diferencia. It’s increasingly easy here to feel you’ve never left home, so it’s refreshing to find this place, where the locals, not us, are most in their element.
AFTER A COUPLE NIGHTS in Playa, we’re rolling down the beach highway, protected by Jesus, two raccoon tails, and Scooby Doo with boxing gloves. The charms sway on the windshield of the colectivo carrying us south toward Tulum, though their powers hardly seem necessary.
About an hour’s ride from Playa, this is the new frontier of Mexican tourism, and the government is working hard to remove all obstacles—not least the jungle—in the way. A rocky two-laner a decade ago, this road has been smoothed and widened several times to accommodate the boom of all-inclusives strung out between Cancun and Tulum. Many of these resorts are foreign-owned and some are allegedly illegal, having paid off the right people to violate building and environmental rules. All, by their nature, eliminate the need for local stores and restaurants, such that Mexicans here toil mostly as waiters and maids. One by one, our companions in the colectivo get out and pass through the grand, bland facades until my girlfriend and I are the only ones left.
Tulum is really two towns, a growing pueblo off the highway, the other very much in ruins. The Mayan ruinas are right on the ocean, an ancient fortress city that now attracts more tourists in a week—day-trippers from Playa and the resorts, mostly—than it ever had residents. We are staying in neither of these places. From Tulum pueblo, we travel by taxi 15 minutes farther south, to the antithesis of all-inclusives—a string of some two dozen small hotels offering bungalows on the beach.
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