Outdoors
Glance up Heather and Brent Holm’s driveway, and you will spot three signs on the front wooden gate: “Monarch Way Station,” “Wild Ones: Native Plants, Natural Landscapes,” and an award for a first-place restoration project.
It took Katie Skinner only about five minutes to trust Tom Lecy, a then-19-year-old college kid pitching an idea to clean up the water off the dock of her lakeside home in Excelsior.
Whether you soak up a beautiful summer day at the Wayzata beach or take a walk near Lake Minnetonka when the first signs of spring appear, you can feel there’s something alluring about the water. The lake offers peace and serenity for some, excitement and recreation for others.
Lake Minnetonka is a summer paradise. People come from all over the metro to fish, boat, attend festivals, enjoy lakeside patio bars or just take a walk. Winter, on the other hand, is long, cold and dark.
Children are spending half as much time outside as they did 20 years ago, according to recent studies.
A scenic byway in the lake area has been proposed in order to better direct people to the best route for viewing the lake.
In the rented corner of a St. Paul warehouse, Stefan Ronchetti and Alex Brost are doing what, at first glance, makes little sense to a lot of landlocked Midwesterners: building and shaping custom surfboards. In reality, they’re part of a growing surfing culture in Minnesota.
Meet Sam Rogers, Colin Grey Voigt and Bruce Martinson. Though they differ in age and occupation, these three share a love of sailing that they trace back to their days at the Lake Minnetonka Sailing school.
Each summer, Lake Minnetonka overflows with speedboats, pontoons and people: The pull of the water can’t be denied. But for those of us who need a little more activity than sunbathing provides, two lake-area businesses offer extreme water sports that the likes of a non-coastal town rarely sees.
